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Bakbb Fish

Baked fish stuffed with pork and crackers, seasoned, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Bakbb Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scrape and wash the fish clean, then rub it with 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. Roll the crackers finely.

  3. Mix the crackers with parsley, 1 tablespoon chopped pork, ½ teaspoon pepper, and ½ tablespoon salt.

  4. Moisten the mixture with cold water.

  5. Stuff the fish with the mixture and fasten it with a skewer.

  6. Cut gashes into the fish, 2 inches long and ½ inch deep, and insert strips of the remaining pork into the gashes.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a pan.

  2. Dredge the fish with salt, pepper, and flour every 15 minutes.

  3. Renew the water often.

  4. Bake for 1½ hours.

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

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

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by baking over a long period.
Crackers
Rolled fine and moistened, they bind the stuffing and give it a soft, absorbent texture.
Pork
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing and the fish moist during baking.
Flour
Dredged over the fish, it helps form a light crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Dredge the fish every 15 minutes. Repeated dusting with flour, salt, and pepper builds a coating that browns and seasons the surface. Missing applications leaves the skin pale and bland.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pork, pepper, flour. 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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