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Baked White Fish or Trout

A baked fish, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and flour, stuffed with salt pork and garnished with parsley and Saratoga chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked White Fish or Trout

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish by letting boiling water run through its mouth and eye sockets.

  2. Gash the skin at intervals of 2 inches and insert slips of salt pork.

  3. Rub the fish with salt, pepper, and soft butter, then dredge lightly with flour.

  4. Skewer the fish in a '0' or 'S' shape and place it on a bed of pork chips on a fish sheet.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) without water in the dripping pan.

  2. Baste often with fat from the pork or a little melted butter.

  3. Serve on a folded napkin, garnished with parsley and Saratoga chips.

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 + 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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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, cooking through in the oven to become flaky.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the fish as it bakes, keeping the flesh moist and adding savour.
Soft butter
Adds fat that enriches the flesh and helps it brown lightly on the surface.
Flour
Light dusting that helps the skin brown and gives the surface a slightly crisp finish.

The step that matters

Basting often. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in a hot oven. Regular basting with melted fat coats the surface, keeping the flesh moist while the skin browns.

Swap the onion

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

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

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