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Baked Whitefish

A baked whitefish stuffed with poultry dressing, seasoned with salt and pepper, and topped with butter or salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Whitefish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, rinse, and dry the whitefish.

  2. Rub the fish inside and out with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Fill the fish with a drier poultry dressing and sew it up.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a hot pan with drippings and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Dredge the fish with flour and lay thin slices of salt pork or bits of butter on top.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours, basting occasionally.

  4. Serve with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender, flaky flesh inside the dressing.
Poultry dressing
Fills the cavity, adding flavor and absorbing juices from the fish as it bakes.
Flour
Dredged over the fish to help form a browned, golden crust.
Salt pork or butter
Lies on top of the fish, adding fat that bastes the surface and encourages browning.
Drippings
Fat in the pan that adds richness and helps prevent the fish from sticking.

The step that matters

Fill the fish with a drier poultry dressing and sew it up.. A wetter dressing releases moisture and can make the stuffing soggy and dilute the fish's flavor during baking. Using a drier dressing helps it hold its shape and keeps the cavity from becoming waterlogged.

“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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