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Stuffing for Fish

A crumbly cracker-based stuffing seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, onion juice, butter, pickles or capers, optionally egg, for filling fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Stuffing for Fish

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 ↓

Stuffing for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, combine the cracker crumbs, salt, pepper, parsley, onion juice, and melted butter.

  2. Add the chopped pickles or capers and mix well.

  3. If the mixture is too dry, add a little hot water to achieve the desired consistency.

  4. If desired, you can add an egg to the mixture, but it is not necessary.

Use

  1. Use this stuffing to fill the fish before cooking.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cracker crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing and soak up the butter and liquids.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture so the stuffing stays tender rather than dry.
Egg
Binds the crumbs together to help the stuffing hold its shape.

The step that matters

Adjusting the moisture with hot water. Crumbs vary in how much liquid they absorb. Adding hot water only if the mix is too dry prevents a crumbly stuffing that won't hold together, while avoiding a soggy one that turns pasty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, butter, capers, 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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