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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with butter, flour, and a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

  1. Clean and wash the fish in salted water.

  2. Wipe the fish dry.

  3. Prepare a stuffing as per roast-meat dressing instructions.

  4. Fill the fish with the stuffing and sew it up.

Bake

  1. In a baking pan, combine ½ cup butter, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 cup boiling water.

  2. Cover the pan with water to a depth of half an inch.

  3. Baste the fish every ten minutes.

  4. Cook the fish for 40 minutes.

  5. Dredge the fish with flour and let it brown.

  6. Baste the fish again with the gravy.

  7. Dredge the fish with flour again, browning it.

  8. Check if the fish is done by inserting a knitting needle; it should be tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Cream 1 tablespoon of butter with 1 teaspoon of browned flour, a pinch of pepper, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Carefully lift the fish onto a serving dish.

  3. Add a little hot water to the remaining basting gravy in the pan. Scrape up the browned bits.

  4. Boil. Stir in the thickened butter. Boil again.

  5. Strain the gravy over the fish.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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, cooking through while the stuffing stays moist inside.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the basting liquid and helps the fish brown on the surface.
Flour
Dusted on the fish and thickens the pan gravy, and browns to add color and flavor.

The step that matters

Checking doneness with a knitting needle. The fish is done when a thin needle slides in easily and the flesh is tender. Overcooking dries the fish, while underbaking leaves the flesh firm and opaque near the bone.

“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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