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Baked Fish

Baked fish with herbs, lemon juice, vinegar, mushrooms, white wine, stock, anchovy sauce, and breadcrumbs or buttered paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the fish on a well-buttered dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add herbs, lemon juice, vinegar, mushrooms, white wine, stock, and anchovy sauce.

  2. Cover with brown bread crumbs or a sheet of buttered paper.

  3. Bake for a few minutes until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Slip onto a dish and garnish.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 gently in the oven to become flaky.
Butter
Coats the dish and fish, adding richness and helping prevent sticking.
Mushrooms
Release moisture as they cook, adding savoury flavour and juiciness to the dish.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and its liquid helps keep the fish moist while baking.
Brown bread crumbs
Form a cover that protects the fish and browns lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Covering the fish before baking. The crumbs or buttered paper trap steam around the fish, keeping it moist. Without this cover the thin fish can dry out quickly in the hot oven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, vinegar, mushroom, white wine, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, vinegar, mushroom, white wine, anchovy, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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