Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
Fish
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Season the fish well with coarse sea salt.
Lay thin slices of pork over the fish to baste it.
Place the fish on a platter for baking to retain juices.
Bake
Bake in the preheated oven for one hour, or until cooked through. If the fish is very large, adjust the time accordingly.
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 + porktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together668 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,487 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Pork + saucetop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,666 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
- Whole fish
- Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven's dry heat.
- Thin slices of pork
- Lie over the fish to baste it, adding moisture and savory fat as they render.
The step that matters
Baking until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and dries out if overbaked, while a large fish may need longer to cook through at the centre. Checking doneness by thickness, rather than relying only on the clock, helps the flesh stay moist and fully cooked.
“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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