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Bread Stuffing for Fish

Bread stuffing for fish made with stale bread, suet, onion, parsley, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Bread Stuffing for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Soak the stale bread in water until soft, then press out the water.

  2. Add chopped suet, pepper, salt, fried onion, and parsley if desired.

  3. Cook briefly, then remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the mixture into the fish, sew it closed, and bake.

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked and pressed, it forms the bulk of the stuffing and absorbs moisture from the fish.
Beaten egg
Added off the heat, it binds the stuffing together as it sets.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during baking.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg off the heat. If the stuffing is too hot when the egg goes in, the egg can scramble into lumps instead of blending smoothly and binding the mixture evenly.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, onion, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, onion, egg. 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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