Skip to main content
Main

Baked Bass

A whole bass stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, lemon, parsley, marjoram, eggs, and salt pork, baked and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Bass

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and clean the bass, leaving the head on.

  2. Stuff the fish with the bread crumbs, butter, lemon rind, parsley, marjoram, salt, and white pepper.

  3. Mix the beaten eggs with a little water and add to the stuffing mixture.

  4. Sew up the opening of the fish and score it on each side.

  5. Place thin slices of salt pork in the scored spaces.

Bake and serve

  1. Put the fish in a pan with a little stock and bake at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Once cooked, carefully transfer the fish to a hot dish.

  3. Add a little tomato sauce to the gravy left in the pan and bring to a boil.

  4. Strain the sauce and serve it separately.

  5. Garnish the fish with parsley and lemon slices.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Marjoram + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together883 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bass
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so the stuffing and skin stay moist.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and egg to form a moist, firm stuffing that holds its shape during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for moisture and richness, carrying flavour through the stuffing and fish.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together so it sets lightly rather than falling apart.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the fish as it bakes, adding savouriness and moisture.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and colour to the pan gravy served alongside the fish.

The step that matters

Baking the stuffed fish. Stuffed whole fish can be underdone at the centre while the surface dries out. Cook until the flesh flakes easily at the thickest part, and keep the stuffing moist so it sets without drying.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, lemon, parsley, marjoram, egg, pork):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, lemon, parsley, marjoram, egg, pork. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes