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Baked Red Snapper

A whole red snapper baked with salt, pepper, and optional cheesecloth, served with hollandaise or white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Snapper and sauce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Red Snapper

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the red snapper and sprinkle the inside with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Stuff the fish and sew or pin it together.

  3. Grease a baking pan and place the fish inside.

  4. If you don't have a fish sheet, fold the fish in cheesecloth.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 45 minutes, basting frequently, until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Serve with hollandaise sauce or plain white 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. Snapper + saucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Snapper + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Red snapper
Forms the main protein that cooks through in the oven and becomes flaky when done.
Butter or oil
Greasing keeps the fish from sticking to the pan and adds a little richness to the surface.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during baking. Fish has little connective tissue and can dry out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting adds moisture to the surface, helping the flesh stay moist while it cooks through.

“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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