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Broiled Halibut with Maitre D'hotel

A broiled halibut fillet topped with a butter‑parsley sauce flavored with lemon or vinegar, salt, pepper, cayenne, and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Halibut with Maitre D'hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter both sides of the halibut.

  2. Season the halibut with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the halibut in a broiler.

  2. Cook the halibut over clear coals for twenty minutes, turning frequently.

  3. Transfer the halibut to a hot dish.

  4. Spread the sauce over the halibut, using 1 tablespoon of sauce per pound.

  5. Garnish with parsley.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to firm, flaky flesh over direct heat.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the fish stay moist while it cooks and browns.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the halibut over clear coals for twenty minutes, turning frequently. Halibut is lean and dries out quickly, so frequent turning and watching the heat help the flesh cook evenly without becoming tough or dry.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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