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Baked White Fish

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 from the tail.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a skillet, fry the chopped onion in 1 ounce 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.

  4. Stuff the fish with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Sew the fish up with fine twine.

  2. Wrap the fish with white tape.

  3. Rub the fish with butter.

  4. Place it in a baking pan with a little hot water at the bottom.

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

  6. Mash the hard-boiled egg yolks into a smooth paste with salad oil.

  7. Stir in mustard.

  8. Add 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, cooked gently in the baking pan.
Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed, it adds moisture and bulk to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the fish brown lightly as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when heated.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed with oil into a smooth, thick dressing that adds richness.

The step that matters

Shape the fish into an S and bake until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry or flaky when overbaked, so check it for doneness rather than relying on a fixed time. Stuffing needs enough heat to set the egg yolks fully.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, bread, 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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