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Halibut Sauce

A simple sauce made from soup stock, lemon juice, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and salt, served with boiled halibut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Halibut Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Thicken the soup stock slightly.

  2. Add the lemon juice, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and salt.

  3. Serve in a gravy boat with boiled halibut.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup stock
Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts richness.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth and umami to the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, ketchup, sauce, pepper):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ketchup, sauce, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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