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Fish Bake

A baked fish served with a tomato and pea sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Bake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Butter a pan.

  2. Place the fish in the pan.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then dot with a little butter.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake until tender.

  2. For the sauce, cook the tomatoes, peas, and onions until thick.

  3. Add salt and pepper to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Place the fish on a platter and pour the sauce around it.

  2. Garnish with lemon.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through gently in the oven until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender as it bakes.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and body, thickening into the base of the sauce as they cook down.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften and thicken the sauce.
Peas
Add body and mild sweetness to the sauce as they cook down.

The step that matters

Bake until tender. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry and firm once overcooked, so it should be checked for tenderness and removed as soon as the flesh flakes easily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, butter, tomato, peas, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, butter, tomato, peas, lemon. 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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