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Baked Fish

Baked fish stuffed with bread crumbs, pork, and herbs, topped with pork slices, baked, served with drawn butter and garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. 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 fish

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

  2. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, chopped fat pork, salt, pepper, thyme, and marjoram.

  3. Fill the belly of the fish with the dressing and secure it well.

Bake

  1. Place the fish on a pan, top with slices of pork, and add water.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1.5 hours, depending on the size of the fish.

Make the drawn butter and serve

  1. For the drawn butter, boil 1 pint of water and add butter and corn starch mixed with a little water.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes and serve in a gravy tureen with chopped parsley or chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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. Pork + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, cooking through in the oven while the dressing and pork flavour it.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat from the pork and fish, forming a moist, binding stuffing.
Fat pork
Renders fat during baking, adding moisture and savoury richness to the dressing and fish.
Butter
Provides fat and richness to the drawn butter sauce served alongside the fish.
Corn starch
Thickens the drawn butter sauce as it boils, giving it a smooth, pourable body.

The step that matters

Securing the dressing in the fish. Stuffing expands and loosens as it heats and moistens. If the fish is not sealed well, the dressing can fall out during baking, leaving the fish dry and the stuffing unevenly cooked.

Swap the marjoram

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

  1. Marjoramthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, pork, pepper, thyme, butter, corn. 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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