Skip to main content
Main

Baked Fish

A whole fish stuffed with a mixture, wrapped in salt pork, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Fish

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 the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Stuff the fish and sew up the opening with a trussing needle.

  3. Cut three gashes in each side of the fish and insert slices of salt pork into each cut.

  4. Truss the fish into an 'S' shape using a double cotton cord.

  5. Dredge the fish with salt, pepper, and flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish on slices of salt pork in a baking pan and cover with more pork slices.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes per pound, basting frequently with the pork drippings.

  3. If needed, add a little water for basting.

  4. Serve with a brown sauce, garnished with lemon 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, cooking through gently in the oven.
Salt pork
Releases fat as it heats, moistening the fish and flavouring it from inside and below.
Stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding bulk and absorbing juices from the fish as it bakes.
Flour
Dredged on the outside, it helps the surface brown and form a light crust.

The step that matters

Basting with the pork drippings. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting with the rendered fat keeps the surface moist and carries flavour into the flesh, so it should not be skipped.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes