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Baked White-fish

A whole white fish stuffed with breadcrumbs and butter, baked and served with parsley or egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 White-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

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

  2. Fill the fish with the bread crumbs and butter.

  3. Sew up the fish to secure the stuffing.

  4. Sprinkle the fish with butter, salt, and pepper.

  5. Dredge the fish with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for one hour, basting often.

  2. Serve with parsley sauce or egg sauce.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  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

Bread crumbs
Fill the fish cavity and absorb butter to make a moist stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender while it bakes.
Flour
Dredging coats the skin, helping it brown and seal in moisture during baking.

The step that matters

Basting often during the bake. Basting spreads melted butter over the fish and keeps the surface from drying out, so the flesh stays moist over the long hour in the oven.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

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