Skip to main content
Main

Baked White Fish

A whole white fish baked with a stuffing of onion, bread, butter, eggs, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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 the fish

  1. Cut off the fish head if desired and remove the backbone from the head to within 2 inches of the tail.

  2. Shape the fish into an 'S'.

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.

Stuff, wrap and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the mixture.

  2. Sew the fish up with twine.

  3. Wrap the fish with white tape.

  4. Rub the fish with butter.

  5. Place the fish in a baking pan with a little hot water at the bottom.

  6. Bake the fish at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

Make the egg sauce

  1. 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

Eggs
Beaten yolks bind the stuffing and help it set as it heats and bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the onion, bread stuffing and fish skin.
Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed, it gives the stuffing body and a soft, absorbent texture.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stuffing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed with oil and mustard to form a rich, smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry or tough when overbaked. The stuffing is dense and must reach a safe, set state, so check the fish is opaque and flakes easily at the thickest point.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes