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To Stuff and Bake Fish

A fish stuffed with a bread and butter mixture, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Stuff and Bake 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 stuffing

  1. Soak the bread in cold water until soft, then drain and mash it fine.

  2. Mix the mashed bread with drawn butter, salt, pepper, and spices if desired.

  3. If using, add the raw eggs to make the dressing smoother.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the mixture and sew it up.

  2. In a baking pan, add the water and butter, then place the fish inside.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 40 to 50 minutes.

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

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

  2. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked and mashed, it forms the bulk of the stuffing and holds moisture inside the fish.
Drawn butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing moist and tender as it bakes.
Raw eggs
Bind the stuffing and make the dressing smoother and more cohesive when baked.
Whole fish
The main protein, which cooks through in the oven while the stuffing warms inside it.

The step that matters

Stuff and bake. Overfilling or sewing the fish too tightly can leave the stuffing undercooked or split the skin, since the dense mixture needs heat to reach the center.

“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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