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Baked Fish

A whole fish stuffed with a garlic, mace, pepper, butter, onion, parsley, and breadcrumb mixture, baked with optional pork, wine, and seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Scale the fish and brown it in a frying pan with sweet lard.

  2. Mix the pounded cloves, mace, salt, cayenne, black pepper, butter, onion, parsley, and bread crumbs.

Stuff and dress

  1. Fill the fish with the mixture and sew it up.

  2. Rub the outside of the fish with egg and cover with the remaining dressing.

  3. If the pan hasn't been browned, add slices of pork.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in the pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

  2. Add 1 pint of water and bake for 2 hours, basting occasionally.

  3. Fifteen minutes before finishing, add ½ pint of red wine.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts into the stuffing and fish, adding moisture and richness.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and help hold the stuffing together inside the fish.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during baking, adding savory aroma to the stuffing.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, pungent aroma that flavors the stuffing.
Red wine
Adds acidity and flavor to the pan liquid, deepening the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the red wine fifteen minutes before finishing. Wine added late keeps its aromatic and acidic flavor, since prolonged heat drives off volatile aromas and mellows its bright notes.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, clove, pepper, walnut, butter, flour, onion. 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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