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Baked Bass

A baked bass stuffed with a forcemeat of bread, onion, parsley, salt pork, capers, and broth, served with a walnut catsup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Baked Bass

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Choose a fresh bass, wash it well, and wipe it with a clean, dry cloth.

  2. Soak the stale bread in enough cold water to cover it.

  3. Chop the onion and fry it in butter until light brown.

  4. Wring the bread dry.

  5. Add the dry bread to the onion mixture with parsley, salt pork, capers, salt, white pepper, and broth; stir until hot.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the forcemeat.

  2. Place the stuffed fish in a dripping pan with sliced carrot, onion, bay leaf, and parsley.

  3. Cover the fish with salt pork slices.

  4. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, basting occasionally.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Keep the fish warm while preparing the sauce by straining the drippings.

  2. Add Walnut catsup, Worcestershire sauce, capers, and parsley to the strained drippings.

  3. Pour some sauce under the fish on the serving dish.

  4. Serve the rest of the sauce in a bowl.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked and wrung dry, it binds the forcemeat and keeps the stuffing moist and tender.
Butter
Fat that fries the onion, adding richness and flavor to the forcemeat.
Salt pork
Fat that adds savory flavor and moisture as it renders over the fish during baking.
Onion
Sweetness and aroma when fried in butter, flavoring the forcemeat and the pan.
Broth
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the bread stuffing as it heats.

The step that matters

Wring the bread dry. Bread soaked in water holds a lot of liquid. If it stays wet, the forcemeat becomes soggy and loose, so it won't hold together well when stuffed into the fish.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, butter, parsley, pork, capers, carrot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, butter, parsley, pork, capers, carrot. 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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