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Baked Fish

A whole fish stuffed with a bread and onion mixture, baked with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 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 the stuffing

  1. Remove the backbone from the fish, leaving the head and tail intact.

  2. Fry the chopped onions in butter until soft.

  3. Mix the fried onions with soaked bread, egg yolk, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and parsley.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the mixture and pour melted butter over it.

  2. Add a little water to the baking pan and place the fish inside.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven to become flaky.
Soaked bread
Adds moisture and bulk to the stuffing so it stays tender rather than dense.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing together and helps it set as it cooks.
Onions
Softened in butter, they add sweetness and a savory aroma to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns the surface when poured over the fish.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. A whole fish stuffed with bread and egg holds heat slowly, so the center can stay underdone while the outside dries. Check the thickest part and the stuffing, since undercooked egg and flesh are unsafe and overbaking makes the thinner areas dry.

Swap the onion

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

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

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