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To Bake Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Bake Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stuff the fish with bread stuffing.

  2. Sew the fish closed with a trussing needle and wrap string around it several times.

  3. Rub the fish with butter and dredge it with flour.

  4. Place the fish in a pan and add a little water and bits of butter.

  5. Baste the fish often while it cooks.

  6. Once done, place the fish on a platter.

  7. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

  8. Serve with cucumber and egg sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, flour, parsley, lemon, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, flour, parsley, lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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