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Baked Bluefish, Italian Style

A baked bluefish dish flavored with white wine, mushroom liquor, onions, mushrooms, and a Spanish sauce, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Bluefish, Italian Style

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 and bake

  1. Score and scale the bluefish, then place it in a buttered pan.

  2. Add ½ cup of white wine, 3 tablespoons of mushroom liquor, chopped onion, chopped mushrooms, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover the dish with buttered paper and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 minutes.

  4. Remove the fish and place it on a serving dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cooking liquor with ¼ cup of Spanish sauce and ⅓ cup of white wine, and reduce for 2 minutes.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fish, sprinkle with chopped parsley, and serve with fancy croutons.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Bluefish + saucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bluefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until flaky.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and its liquid helps steam the fish while it bakes.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture that combine with the cooking liquor into the sauce.
Spanish sauce
Thickens and enriches the reduced cooking liquor into a savoury sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Reducing the cooking liquor into sauce. Reducing for only 2 minutes may leave the sauce thin or watery. Simmering concentrates the flavours and lets the liquid thicken slightly, so it clings to the fish rather than pooling on the plate.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bluefish, white wine, mushroom, pepper, butter, sauce, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bluefish, white wine, mushroom, pepper, butter, sauce, parsley. 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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