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Stuffed Pickerel

Stuffed pickerel is a fish fillet filled with breadcrumb mixture, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Stuffed Pickerel

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. Remove the backbone from the fish.

  2. Mix breadcrumbs with salt, pepper, herbs, and melted butter.

  3. Combine with the beaten egg and stuff the fish.

  4. Sew up the fish and place it in a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C), basting with melted butter as needed.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Pickerel
Forms the main body that is stuffed and baked whole.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and form the bulk of the stuffing, keeping it light.
Beaten egg
Binds the breadcrumb stuffing so it holds together during baking.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture, helping the fish stay tender and brown.

The step that matters

Sew up the fish and place it in a baking dish. The stuffing must stay enclosed while baking; if the fish is loosely closed, the stuffing can spill out and dry out, and the fish may cook unevenly.

“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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