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Baked White Fish

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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.

  2. Remove the backbone, leaving two inches near the tail.

Make the stuffing

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until soft.

  2. Add the soaked bread, 2 ounces of butter, salt, pepper, and parsley or sage and heat the mixture through.

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

Stuff, shape and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the mixture.

  2. Sew the fish up with fine 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. Shape the fish into an S.

  7. Bake the fish until cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the hard-boiled egg yolks.

  2. Add salad oil, mustard, pepper, and vinegar to the mash 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 that is stuffed and baked, carrying the filling's flavour.
Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed, it adds body and moisture to the stuffing.
Egg yolks
Beaten into the stuffing, they bind it and set as it heats and bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the onion and carrying flavour through the stuffing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed with oil and mustard to form a rich, emulsified sauce base.

The step that matters

Sew the fish up with fine twine. If the stuffing is not sealed inside, it can leak or loosen during baking, so the fish must be closed firmly before cooking.

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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