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To Bake Fish

A fish baked with pork strips, water, butter, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

To Bake Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the fish with a towel.

  2. Make gashes in the fish, half inch deep and two inches long, spaced one inch apart.

  3. Lay the fish in a pan and place the strips of pork on top.

  4. Add water to the pan until it is half inch deep.

  5. Add butter and salt to the pan.

Cook

  1. Dredge the fish with flour and baste often.

  2. Keep adding gravy as it boils away.

  3. Check doneness with a knitting needle and lift the fish with a cake turner.

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

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish and sets its flaky texture when cooked through.
Strips of pork
Render fat into the pan, adding savory flavor and moisture to the fish and gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown while the fish cooks.
Flour
Dredging helps the fish brown and lightly thickens the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Check doneness with a knitting needle. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry once overcooked. It is done when the flesh turns opaque and separates easily along the grain, so test gently before lifting.

“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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