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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with bacon, bread crumbs, and a buttery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 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 the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, melted butter, salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  3. Stuff the fish with the dressing. Sew or skewer it closed.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a pan. Top the fish with bacon strips. Add water.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour, basting often until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix butter and flour in a bowl to form a smooth paste.

  2. Place the bowl over boiling water. Gradually add boiling water. Stir until thickened.

  3. Add salt, red pepper, beaten egg yolk and lemon juice to the 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. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + fishtop 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the melted butter and form a moist, binding stuffing inside the fish.
Bacon
Lays fat over the fish as it bakes, adding flavour and moisture to the surface.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour in both the stuffing and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and hot water into a smooth paste.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smoother, creamier body.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water to the butter and flour paste. Adding the hot liquid slowly while stirring keeps the starch smooth; adding it all at once can leave lumps in the sauce.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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