Skip to main content
Main

Baked or Stuffed Fish

A baked fish stuffed with a paste of crackers, parsley, salt pork, and spices, then baked with water and garnished with parsley or celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked or Stuffed Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and scale the fish, then rub it with coarse sea salt.

  2. In a bowl, mix crushed crackers, parsley, salt pork or bacon, ground pepper, salt, and enough water to form a paste.

  3. Stuff the paste inside the fish and sew it closed.

  4. Make gashes across the fish, about ½ inch deep and 1 inch long, and fill them with strips of fat pork.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a pan, sprinkle with pepper, salt and flour, and add hot water to cover the bottom.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour, basting with gravy and adding hot water as needed.

  3. Once done, transfer to a large dish and garnish with parsley or celery. Serve with Holland sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and cooks through in the oven.
Crackers
Crushed into the stuffing, they bind with water to form a moist paste.
Salt pork or bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the stuffing and fish during baking.
Fat pork
Strips placed in the gashes melt during baking, adding moisture and richness to the fish.
Flour
Sprinkled on the fish, it helps the pan juices thicken and brown into gravy.

The step that matters

Adding hot water as needed while baking. The bottom of the pan must keep enough liquid to form gravy and prevent the fish and stuffing from drying out or scorching during the hour in the oven.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pork, pepper, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pork, pepper, flour. 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes