Skip to main content
Main

Baked Fish

A whole fish stuffed with bread crumbs, pork, and onion, baked with bacon fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fish and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,668 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Baked 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, pork, and onion.

  3. Fill the body of the fish with the stuffing and close it with a skewer.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a baking pan and add a little water.

  2. Dredge the fish with coarse sea salt and place slices of bacon fat on top.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour until cooked through.

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. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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

Whole fish
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the pork and onion, helping the stuffing hold together.
Pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aroma and sweetness to the stuffing as it bakes.
Bacon fat
Melts over the fish, adding fat for moisture and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. A whole fish is thick, so the centre can lag behind the surface. Checking that the flesh is opaque and flakes easily at the thickest point helps avoid underdone or dry fish.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, pork):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

More baked fish recipes

with Tomatoes 7with Breadcrumbs 6Stuffed 6in Batter 4with Pork Slices 4Sauce for 4 See all 221 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes