Skip to main content
Main

Baked Bluefish

A baked bluefish served with pork larding, onions, bread, and lemon.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Bluefish

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pan

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Lay the larding pork slices in the bottom of a baking pan.

  3. Sprinkle the chopped onion over the pork.

  4. Place the bread slices on top of the onion.

Prepare the fish

  1. Score the bluefish across the backbone in 4 or 5 places and insert pieces of larding pork into each gash.

  2. Lay additional strips of pork over the surface of the fish.

  3. Season the fish with salt and pepper, then dredge with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the fish with another pan and bake until the flakes separate from the backbone.

  2. Serve the fish in the baking pan with lemon quarters.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

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

  5. Onion + breadtop 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

Larding pork
Bastes the fish with fat as it bakes, keeping the flesh moist and adding savory flavor.
Bluefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, moist flesh.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it bakes, adding aromatic flavor to the pan juices.
Bread
Soaks up the rendered pork fat and onion juices, adding body to the pan base.

The step that matters

Covering and baking until the flakes separate. Covering traps steam so the fish cooks gently and stays moist. Pulling it too late dries the flesh, while the flakes separating from the backbone shows it is cooked through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, bread, bluefish, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes