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Baked Fish with Oyster Stuffing

A fish baked with a filling of oysters and crumbs, served with tomato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and oyster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Fish with Oyster Stuffing

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Rub the fish with salt and lemon juice.

  2. Drain the oysters and roll them in the crumbs.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the fish with the oyster mixture and sprinkle remaining crumbs on top.

  2. Place the fish in a roasting pan with a little water.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with tomato poured around the fish or in side dishes.

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. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 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

Oysters
Add a briny, savoury filling that flavours the fish as it bakes.
Cracker or bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and form a soft stuffing that holds the oysters together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and firms its surface proteins.
Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by baking around the stuffing.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, oyster, bread, tomato):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Pumpkinfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, oyster, bread, tomato. 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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