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Baked Fish

Baked fish stuffed with cracker, butter, pepper, salt, egg, served with lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean the inside of the fish and fill it with a stuffing made of powdered cracker, butter, pepper, salt, and egg.

  2. Rub the outside of the fish with salt and cornmeal.

  3. Sprinkle the outside of the fish with some of the stuffing.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a baking pan with ½ cup of water.

  2. Bake thoroughly at 400°F (200°C).

  3. Add butter and sweet cream to the gravy before serving.

  4. Garnish with thin slices of lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 into moist, flaky flesh that carries the stuffing.
Powdered cracker
Absorbs moisture and binds the stuffing so it holds together during baking.
Egg
Sets when heated, helping bind the cracker stuffing into a firm, cohesive filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture, and helps the stuffing and gravy taste savoury.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy, softening its flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Bake thoroughly at 400°F (200°C). Fish cooks quickly and turns dry and tough if overbaked, yet undercooked fish is unsafe. The flesh should turn opaque and flake easily, and the stuffing should be heated 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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