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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with salt, pepper, flour, and optional bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked 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. Remove the scales and clean the fish carefully.

  2. Take off the head and cut out the fins.

  3. If desired, remove the backbone and ribs by cutting inside along the backbone to the tail and drawing them out.

  4. Stuff the fish and sew it up.

  5. Skewer it in the shape of an 'S' to keep it upright.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a baking pan, season with salt and pepper, and dredge lightly with flour.

  2. If the fish is very dry, lay a few thin strips of bacon across the back before adding the flour.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour, or until the flesh can be easily separated with a fork.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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
Provides the main body of the dish, cooking through to flaky flesh in the oven.
Flour
Light dusting on the surface that helps the skin brown and seasoning cling.
Bacon
Thin strips laid over the back add fat that keeps a very dry fish moist as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Soft stale crumbs in the stuffing that absorb moisture and add body to the filling.
Butter
Melted fat that adds richness and helps the stuffing brown lightly.

The step that matters

Judging doneness by flaking. Fish is cooked when its flesh separates easily with a fork. Baking past that point dries the flesh, so check it before the full time is up.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, flour, bread, butter. 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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