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Baked Bluefish

A baked bluefish served with a sauce of butter, flour, pickles, capers, parsley, and Worcestershire anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Bluefish

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Clean the bluefish thoroughly, removing any slime or dark matter inside. Then use your finger and some salt to clean the inside, and wipe it dry.

  2. Stuff the fish with veal stuffing and sew it up.

  3. Place it in a dripping pan. Dot the fish with butter pieces, sprinkle with salt, and dredge with flour.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 to 40 minutes, depending on size. While the fish is baking, chop the pickled cucumber or capers and parsley.

  5. Once cooked, keep the fish hot.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the dripping pan on the stove. Add 2 teaspoons of flour to the pan and let it brown, stirring with a spoon.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and claret wine (if using). Season with pepper and stir until smooth.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Mix in Worcestershire sauce, anchovy sauce, and the chopped pickles and parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce separately, garnished with lemon points and parsley.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Bluefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through in the oven to become flaky.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness as it melts over the fish during baking.
Flour
Browns in the pan and thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Pickled cucumber or capers
Adds acidity and a briny bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and a tangy, fermented sharpness to the sauce.
Anchovy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that rounds out the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour before adding liquid. Stirring the flour in the hot pan until it browns cooks out its raw taste and helps prevent lumps. Adding the boiling water too early can leave the sauce floury and dull in flavour.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

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