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Baked Fish with Mushrooms

Baked fish topped with mushrooms, parsley, and breadcrumbs, baked with clarified butter and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Fish with Mushrooms

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a deep dish, pour in the clarified butter and add the minced mushrooms and parsley.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the cleaned fish on top, season with salt and white pepper or cayenne, and sprinkle with more herbs.

  2. Pour the white wine gently over the fish.

  3. Cover the fish with a thick layer of bread crumbs and sprinkle with clarified butter.

  4. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with a cut lemon.

  2. If preferred, substitute wine with veal gravy or a mixture of clarified butter, water, lemon-pickle, mushroom catsup, and soy.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 gently under the crumb topping and wine.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and helps the bread crumbs brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust over the fish that protects it from drying and adds crisp texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy, savory flavor and moisture as they cook in the butter.
Light white wine
Adds moisture and acidity, keeping the fish tender while it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour the wine gently over the fish. Pouring gently keeps the bread crumb and herb layer from washing away, so the crust stays even and the fish cooks in the moist steam trapped beneath it.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, parsley, fish, white wine, bread, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, parsley, fish, white wine, bread, 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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