Skip to main content
Main

To Bake Fish

A whole fish is stuffed with a salt pork and breadcrumb mixture, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Bake Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and dry the fish inside and out with a towel.

  2. Make gashes in the fish, ½ inch deep, 2 inches long, and 1 inch apart.

  3. Mix salt pork, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper together to make a dressing.

  4. Stuff the dressing inside the fish and sew it up.

  5. Insert narrow strips of salt pork into the gashes.

  6. Place the fish on a strip of tin the size of the fish.

  7. Put the tin and fish into a baking pan.

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

Bake and baste

  1. Dredge the fish with flour.

  2. Add ½ cup of water, 2 teaspoons of butter, and ¼ teaspoon of salt to the pan.

  3. Baste the fish often.

  4. If the water boils away, add more.

  5. Check for doneness with a knitting needle.

  6. Once done, lift the fish and tin out of the baking pan.

  7. Transfer the fish to a hot platter and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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, cooked whole so it stays moist inside.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the fish and dressing as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat in the dressing, giving the stuffing a moist, soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that enhances flavor and browning in the pan.
Flour
Dusted on the fish so its surface browns and the basting liquid thickens slightly.

The step that matters

Basting and checking the water level. Basting spreads fat and liquid over the fish so the skin stays moist and browns evenly. If the water boils away, the fish can dry out and scorch, so adding more keeps it moist through baking.

“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 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes