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Stuffed and Baked Fish

A whole fish stuffed with a breadcrumb mixture, seasoned, and baked, served with cream or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed and Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wipe the fish dry.

  2. Rub coarse sea salt and black pepper inside the fish.

  3. Salt and flour the outside of the fish well.

Stuff and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix grated bread crumbs with black pepper, coarse sea salt, beaten egg, sage, and onion.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the fish.

  3. Bake the fish until thoroughly done.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or tomato 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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through in the oven.
Grated bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the stuffing and give it a soft, cohesive texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the bread crumbs and other stuffing ingredients together as they cook.
Flour
Dries the fish surface and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake the fish until thoroughly done. The stuffing and thick parts of the fish need enough heat and time to cook through. Fish is done when the flesh turns opaque and flakes easily, and the stuffing's egg must set fully to be safe and firm.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, flour, bread, egg, sage, cream. 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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