Why it works: Bread and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,145 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
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 dressing
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, coarse sea salt, parsley, onion, and chopped salt pork.
Add the egg to the mixture and fill the body of the fish with it. Sew it up.
Bake and serve
Place the fish in a large pan and lay salt pork strips across it.
Add water and a little salt to the pan.
Bake for 1.5 hours, basting often with butter and flour.
Dish the fish, thicken the gravy, and pour it over the fish.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together27,145 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Fish + breadtop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together1,661 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Onion + porktop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together18,199 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Fish + porktop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together665 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Fish + buttertop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together4,432 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread crumbs
- Form the bulk of the dressing, absorbing moisture and giving it body inside the fish.
- Egg
- Binds the dressing so it holds together when the fish is stuffed and baked.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown as it bastes the fish.
- Salt pork
- Adds savoury fat and flavour to the dressing and the fish as it renders in the pan.
- Flour (in the method)
- Thickens the basting liquid and pan juices into a gravy.
The step that matters
Sewing up the stuffed fish. If the seam is loose or the dressing is packed too tightly, it can burst or leave the stuffing undercooked. Fill the cavity gently so the dressing has room to expand slightly as the egg sets.
Flavor stand-ins for the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, onion, pork, egg):
- Garlicabout as good a flavor fit
- Parsleythe original
- Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
- Capersabout as good a flavor fit
Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, onion, pork, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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