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Baked White Fish

A whole white fish stuffed with a bread, onion, and egg yolk mixture, baked with butter and served with a mustard dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut off the fish head if preferred and remove the backbone, leaving 2 inches near the tail.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a pan, fry the chopped onion in 1 tablespoon of butter until soft.

  2. Add the soaked bread, remaining butter, salt, pepper, and parsley or sage; heat through.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the mixture, sew it up with twine, and wrap with white tape.

  2. Rub the fish with butter and place it in a baking pan with a little hot water at the bottom.

  3. Shape the fish into an 'S' and bake until cooked through.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mash the hard-boiled egg yolks with salad oil, mustard, pepper, and vinegar to taste.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through in the baking pan.
Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed, it adds bulk and a soft, moist texture to the stuffing.
Egg yolks
Beaten into the warm stuffing, they bind it and help it set as it cooks.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the onion and fish.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks in off the heat. Egg yolks begin to set at moderate heat, so stirring them into a hot mixture off the heat keeps the stuffing smooth rather than scrambled and grainy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, onion, butter, pepper, parsley, egg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, onion, butter, pepper, parsley, egg. 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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