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Baked Red Snapper, Dutch Sauce

Baked whole red snapper seasoned with salt and pepper, served with butter, lemon juice, and Dutch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Snapper and sauce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Red Snapper, Dutch Sauce

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Clean and scale the red snapper, then season it with salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a baking dish and dot with butter.

  2. Drizzle lemon juice over the fish.

  3. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the fish flakes easily with a fork.

  4. Serve with Dutch sauce poured over the top.

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. Snapper + saucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Snapper + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Red snapper
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to flaky, tender flesh.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the fish brown lightly and stay moist in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.
Dutch sauce
Adds a rich, creamy finish poured over the cooked fish.

The step that matters

Bake until the fish flakes. Fish cooks quickly and becomes dry once overcooked. Checking that it flakes easily with a fork shows it is just cooked through, keeping the flesh moist.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, pepper, butter, sauce):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, pepper, butter, sauce. 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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