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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with a breadcrumb and butter mixture, seasoned with onion, parsley, lemon, salt, pepper, and salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Fish

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Clean the fish and make gashes on each side.

Stuff and baste

  1. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, melted butter, onion, parsley, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the fish.

  3. Insert strips of salt pork into the gashes to baste the fish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on thickness.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb melted butter and juices, forming a moist, binding stuffing inside the fish.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the stuffing moist as it bakes.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the fish as it bakes, adding moisture, savory flavor and some browning.
Fish
Main protein, which cooks through in the oven and is held moist by the stuffing and fat.

The step that matters

Judging the bake time by thickness. Fish cooks quickly once it reaches the right internal temperature, and overbaking dries out the flesh. Thickness varies, so checking the thickest part early helps keep it moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, parsley, lemon, pepper, 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.

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