Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Baked Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fish
Clean and wash the fish in salted water, then wipe it dry.
Prepare a stuffing according to roast-meat dressing instructions and fill the fish, sewing it up.
Bake
In a baking pan, combine ½ cup butter, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 cup boiling water.
Cover the pan with water to a depth of half an inch.
Place the fish inside the pan.
Baste the fish every 10 minutes to prevent the skin from blistering or burning.
Cook for 40 minutes.
Dredge the fish with flour and let it brown.
Baste again with the gravy.
Dredge the fish with flour once more.
Brown the fish again.
Check if the fish is done by inserting a knitting needle; it should be tender.
Make the gravy and serve
Cream 1 tablespoon of butter with 1 teaspoon of browned flour, a pinch of pepper, and a pinch of salt.
Carefully lift the fish onto a serving dish.
Add a little hot water to the remaining basting gravy in the pan.
Scrape up browned bits.
Boil the mixture.
Stir in the thickened butter.
Boil again.
Strain the gravy over the fish.
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.
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Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,948 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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
- Fish
- Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the baking pan.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the basting liquid and the finished gravy.
- Flour
- Dredged onto the fish to brown the surface and help thicken the gravy.
- Browned flour
- Gives the gravy a deeper colour and a toasted flavour, and helps it thicken.
The step that matters
Basting the fish every 10 minutes. Regular basting keeps the skin moist so it does not blister or burn in the oven's dry heat, and it builds browned flavour in the pan liquid that becomes the gravy.
“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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