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Small Fish

Small fish baked in paper with butter, onion or shallot, parsley, pepper, sea salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Small 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

  1. Wash and dry the fish.

  2. Butter a sheet of stiff writing paper.

  3. Lay the fish on the paper.

  4. Sprinkle with finely chopped onion or shallot, parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  5. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over the fish.

  6. Add small pieces of butter around the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Wrap the fish in the paper and bake at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

  2. Serve the fish in the paper in which they were cooked.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently inside the sealed paper.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, basting the fish as it steams in the paper.
Onion or shallot
Adds a mild aromatic sharpness that perfumes the fish as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Wrapping the fish tightly in the paper. The sealed paper traps steam so the fish cooks gently in its own moisture. A loose or torn wrap lets steam escape, which can leave the fish dry or unevenly cooked.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, parsley, pepper, lemon. 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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