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Baked Salmon or Halibut

A baked salmon or halibut served with a homemade hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Salmon or Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Dip the fish in boiling water.

  2. Scrape the fish clean.

  3. Rub the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Place the fish in a pan.

  5. Pour milk over the fish until it is ½ inch deep.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Baste the fish with the milk during baking.

  3. Let the milk cook away towards the end for browning.

Make the hollandaise and serve

  1. Cream the butter for the hollandaise sauce.

  2. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well.

  3. Stir in lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Add boiling water to the sauce and stir rapidly until thickened like custard.

  5. Pour the sauce around the fish on the platter, not over it.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through gently in the milk.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce as it heats.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.
Milk
Moistens the fish while baking and browns as its solids cook down.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce as the boiling water goes in. Egg yolks can scramble if they get too hot too fast. Adding boiling water gradually while stirring rapidly keeps the yolks evenly warmed, so the sauce thickens smoothly like custard instead of curdling.

“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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