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Baked Bluefish

A baked bluefish stuffed with breadcrumbs, thyme, minced beef, and egg, simmered in broth and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Bluefish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe, clean, and dry the bluefish.

  2. Stuff the fish with bread crumbs, salt, pepper, thyme, minced beef, beaten egg, and enough lukewarm water to make a stiff mixture.

  3. Sew up the fish and rub a little butter on the outside.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a dripping pan, pour in the broth, and add grated onion.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until tender.

  3. Remove the fish to a hot platter.

  4. Add salt and pepper to the stock, heat thoroughly, strain over the fish, and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds together while baking.
Egg
Binds the stuffing mixture, helping it set into a stiff, cohesive filling.
Minced raw beef
Adds body and savoriness to the stuffing as it cooks through.
Butter
Adds fat to the outside of the fish, promoting richness and surface browning.
Clear broth
Provides moisture and flavor as the fish cooks, later reduced to a sauce base.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until tender. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry and firm when overbaked, so check for flaky tenderness rather than baking by time alone.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bluefish, thyme, bread, beef, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bluefish, thyme, bread, beef, egg, pepper, 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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