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Baked Bass

Baked Bass is fish stuffed with forcemeat of salt pork, stale bread, onion, parsley, capers, and broth, baked with carrot, onion, bay leaf, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 cold water to cover it.

  3. Chop the onion and other ingredients.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until light brown.

  2. Wring the bread dry and add it to the onion with parsley, salt pork, capers, salt, white pepper, and broth.

  3. Stir until hot.

Bake and serve

  1. Stuff the fish with the forcemeat and place it in a dripping pan with sliced carrot, onion, bay leaf, and parsley.

  2. Cover the fish with slices of salt pork, season with salt and pepper, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, basting occasionally.

  3. Once done, place the fish on a dish to keep warm.

  4. Strain the drippings and mix with walnut catsup, Worcestershire sauce, chopped capers, and parsley for the sauce.

  5. Serve some sauce under the fish and the rest 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

Bass
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and stuffed with forcemeat.
Stale bread
Soaked and wrung dry, it binds the forcemeat and gives it a soft, moist texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the forcemeat and as a covering that bastes the fish.
Butter
Fat used to fry the onion, adding richness and browning to its flavor.
Onion
Fried in butter for the forcemeat and sliced in the pan, adding sweetness and aroma.

The step that matters

Basting the fish while it bakes. Basting spreads fat and drippings over the surface, keeping the flesh moist and helping the skin brown rather than dry out during the 30-minute bake.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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