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Baked Fish

A whole fish is seasoned, wrapped, and baked with salt pork until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Clean, wipe, and dry the fish without removing the head and tail.

  3. Rub the fish all over with salt, stuff it, and sew it up.

  4. Skewer the fish into the shape of a letter S and place it in a baking pan.

  5. Lay strips of salt pork around the pan and across the back of the fish.

  6. Sprinkle the fish with salt and pepper, then dredge it with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. When the flour begins to brown, baste with the fat in the pan.

  2. The fish is done when the flesh separates easily from the bone.

  3. Carefully lift the fish onto a hot platter, remove skewers and strings, and serve.

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. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and pork barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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, cooking through to flaky, tender flesh.
Salt pork strips
Melt during baking, adding fat and savory flavor that bastes the fish.
Flour
Dredged over the fish, it browns in the oven and helps form a golden crust.

The step that matters

Judging doneness by the flesh. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry past doneness. Flesh that separates easily from the bone shows it is cooked through, so checking early and often prevents overbaking.

“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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