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Baked Black Bass

A baked black bass stuffed with onions, breadcrumbs, butter, pepper, salt, anchovy sauce, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Black Bass

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

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

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped onions, bread crumbs, softened butter, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and anchovy sauce until the mixture is a deep red color.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the black bass with the mixture and pour any remaining stuffing over the fish.

  2. Sprinkle the top with a little red pepper before baking.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Add moisture and savory sweetness as they soften during baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and butter, giving the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the stuffing brown in the oven.
Anchovy sauce
Adds concentrated savory, salty depth to the stuffing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, anchovy, sauce. 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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