Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Whitefish, Maitre d'Hotel Butter

Broiled whitefish seasoned with salt and pepper, served with melted Maitre d'Hotel butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Whitefish, Maitre d'Hotel Butter

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Clean and scale the whitefish.

  3. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the fish under the broiler for about 5-7 minutes on each side, until cooked through.

  2. Serve with Maitre d'Hotel butter melted on top.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  2. Whitefish + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Whitefish + peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 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

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through under direct heat.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Adds fat and herb flavour, and melts over the hot fish to moisten it.

The step that matters

Broiling the fish until cooked through. Broiler heat is intense and close, so thin areas can dry out or char before the thick middle sets. Checking the thickest part for opaque, flaky flesh and turning it at the midpoint helps even cooking.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes