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Baked Whitefish

A whole whitefish baked with cracker crumbs, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Whitefish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a baking pan well.

  3. Wash and dry the fish, then place it inside the pan, skin side down.

Season and bake

  1. Sprinkle the cracker crumbs over the fish.

  2. Pour the lemon juice over the fish.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Whitefish + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Whitefish + peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking up moist and flaky in the oven.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb juices and form a light, crisp, golden crust over the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish.

“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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