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Baked Fish

A stuffed haddock baked with parsley, pickles, capers, and pork, garnished with parsley, lemon slices, or hard‑cooked egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the eyes from the fish and clean it thoroughly, wiping inside and out with a cloth dampened with cold water.

  2. Make a stuffing with the parsley, pickles, cracker crumbs, capers, pepper, melted butter, salt, and onion.

  3. Stuff the cavity of the fish with the mixture and sew it up using a larding needle.

  4. Rub the fish with salt, pepper, and butter on both sides.

  5. Cut small gashes across the sides of the fish about two inches apart and insert tiny strips of fat salt pork.

  6. Skewer the fish in the shape of an 'S' and dredge it with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish on cheesecloth in a baking pan with extra pieces of pork.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes per pound, basting frequently with melted pork or salted water.

  3. Serve garnished with parsley and slices of lemon or hard-cooked egg.

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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky, tender pieces during baking.
Cracker or bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist rather than dry.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender and brown lightly in the oven.
Fat salt pork
Melts slowly during baking, basting the fish with fat and adding savory flavor.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny note that contrasts with the rich butter and mild fish.

The step that matters

Basting during baking. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Frequent basting with fat or liquid keeps the surface moist and the flesh tender until it flakes.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, parsley, bread, capers, pepper, butter, pork):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, parsley, bread, capers, pepper, butter, pork. 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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