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Baked Cod, Black Fish, Haddock, Etc

Baked fish stuffed with buttered bread and salt pork, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Baked Cod, Black Fish, Haddock, Etc

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 fish

  1. Spread slices of bread with butter, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Stuff the bread inside the fish and sew it up with a needle and thread.

  3. Insert a small skewer through the lip and tail, securing them with twine.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a serving dish, top with salt pork slices, and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Flour the fish well and baste it several times with the cooking juices.

  3. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fish (cod, black fish, or haddock)
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into moist, flaky flesh.
Bread
Stuffing that absorbs the fish juices and adds a soft, savoury filling.
Salt pork
Renders fat over the fish, adding moisture and savoury flavour as it bakes.
Butter
Enriches the bread stuffing and adds fat for richness and gentle browning.
Flour
Coats the fish so the surface browns and the basting juices thicken slightly.

The step that matters

Basting with cooking juices. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in the oven. Regular basting with its juices keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

“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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