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Baked Fish

A fish stuffed with poultry stuffing, seasoned with pepper and sea salt, dredged in flour, and baked with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and dry the fish.

  2. Rub the inside and outside with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Fill the fish with poultry stuffing and sew it up.

Bake

  1. Place in a hot pan with a little butter.

  2. Dredge the fish with flour and dot with butter.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours, basting occasionally.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Flour
Forms a light coating on the fish that helps the skin brown and crisp.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, helping the fish brown and stay tender while baking.
Poultry stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding flavor and moisture as the fish bakes.

The step that matters

Fill the fish with poultry stuffing and sew it up. Stuffing packed tightly into the cavity can keep the fish from cooking through evenly, and loose stitching may let the filling spill out. Fill it loosely enough for the stuffing and flesh to reach a safe, even temperature together.

“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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