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Baked Trout

A baked trout served with a tomato and celery root sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Trout

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Salt the trout and let it stand for several hours.

  2. Wet the flour with a little cold tomato juice.

Bake

  1. Place the trout in a baking pan with tomatoes, onion, celery root, and butter.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the sauce, thicken it with the egg yolk, and add Worcestershire sauce before serving.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Trout
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven.
Egg yolk
Thickens the strained sauce and gives it a richer, smoother body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when wetted first, so it blends without lumps.
Tomatoes
Provide the liquid and acidity that form the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the fish and the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the egg yolk. Adding the yolk to a hot liquid can scramble it. Whisk a little hot sauce into the yolk first, then stir the mixture back in gently over low heat so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, flour, egg, sauce, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, flour, egg, sauce, butter. 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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