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Baked Fish

A whole fish stuffed, seasoned, and baked with pork fat and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Stuff the fish with your chosen stuffing and sew it closed.

  2. Use a trussing needle to shape the fish into an 'S' by running it through the head, middle, and tail.

  3. Place the fish on a greased baking sheet with handles or on cloth strips for easy lifting.

  4. Grease the baking sheet with salt pork fat and place pieces of pork under the fish.

  5. Sprinkle the fish with salt and pepper, rub with soft butter, and make gashes in the back to insert pork strips.

Bake

  1. Dredge the fish with flour and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned, basting often.

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 + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

Whole fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through as the centerpiece.
Salt pork fat
Greases the pan and adds savory fat that keeps the fish from sticking.
Soft butter
Adds fat and richness to the skin, helping it brown in the oven.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the skin brown and crisp during baking.
Pork strips
Inserted into gashes, they add fat and savory flavor as the fish cooks.

The step that matters

Basting often while baking. Basting repeatedly with fat and juices keeps the surface from drying out and promotes even browning as the fish cooks.

“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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