Name: Baked Black Bass
Ingredients: 8 onions, chopped fine; 4 cups bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons butter; plenty of pepper; coarse sea salt to taste; anchovy sauce; red pepper to taste; optional: pork instead of butter if using tomatoes

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Black Bass

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

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the stuffing

In a bowl, mix the chopped onions, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and anchovy sauce until well combined.

Stuff and bake

Stuff the fish with the mixture and pour any remaining mixture over the top.
Sprinkle with red pepper before baking.

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.

Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions: Add moisture and savory sweetness to the stuffing as they soften.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and bind with the butter to give the stuffing body.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, helping it brown in the oven.
Anchovy sauce: Adds a deep, salty, savory flavor that seasons the stuffing and fish.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, bread, butter, pepper, anchovy, sauce, pork):

Capsicumfits about as well
Potatofits about as well
Tomatothe original
Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, bread, butter, pepper, anchovy, sauce, pork. 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.