Skip to main content
Main

Bluefish Baked Whole

A whole bluefish is stuffed with a bread and herb mixture, wrapped in salt pork, and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Bluefish Baked Whole

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the gills from the bluefish.

  2. Wash the bluefish in cold salted water.

  3. Soak the stale bread in cold water. Squeeze out the excess water from the bread.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a frying pan, combine the onion, parsley, thyme, butter, and soaked bread. Stir the mixture over heat until hot.

  2. Stuff the bluefish with the forcemeat mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the sliced salt pork in a dripping pan. Lay the fish on top of the salt pork.

  2. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

  3. Bake the fish in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned and the skin cracks, about 1 hour.

  4. Transfer the fish to a hot platter. Place the pork on top of the fish.

  5. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 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. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bluefish
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes flaky and moist when baked.
Stale bread
Soaks up moisture and gives the forcemeat a soft, tender body.
Salt pork
Renders fat as it bakes, basting the fish and adding savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and helps it brown.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Baking until the skin cracks. A hot oven browns the skin and drives off surface moisture. Pulling the fish too early leaves it pale and soft, while overbaking dries the flesh and makes it tough.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bluefish, bread, parsley, thyme, butter, pork, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes