Name: To Bake Fish in a Tin Dish
Ingredients: 1 fish, scaled and cleaned; 1 ounce butter or dripping; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons chopped onions; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; bread crumbs; water or broth

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Bake Fish in a Tin Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Dry the fish well.
Grease a tin dish with butter or dripping.
Sprinkle chopped parsley and onions at the bottom of the dish.

Assemble

Place the fish in the dish and season with pepper and salt.
Top with remaining chopped onions, parsley, and bread crumbs.
Dot with a little butter or fat and pour a little water or broth over everything.

Bake

Bake in the oven until done.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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

Fish: Forms the main body of the dish and becomes flaky and tender as it cooks.
Butter or dripping: Adds fat that carries flavour and helps keep the fish moist and the top browning.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, golden crust on top that protects the fish from drying out.
Onions: Release aromatic flavour into the dish as they soften during baking.
Water or broth: Creates steam and moisture in the dish, gently cooking the fish and keeping it juicy.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until done. The record gives no time or temperature, so the fish can dry out or stay undercooked. Fish is done when it flakes easily at its thickest part and turns opaque.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Potatofits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

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

Brown Bread461 recipes

Fried Fish120 recipes

Fish Croquettes81 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

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To Bake Fish in a Tin Dish