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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with buttered bread, pork slices, and seasonings, served with butter and egg garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and dry it with a cloth, inside and out.

  2. Stuff the fish with buttered bread slices sprinkled with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  3. Skewer the fish closed, then flour and salt it.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a baking pan on a rack and add a little hot water to the bottom of the pan.

  2. Skewer small slices of pork over the top of the fish.

  3. Baste the fish occasionally while baking.

  4. Bake for about 1 hour, or until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with drawn butter mixed with chopped hard boiled eggs and parsley.

  2. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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

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

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

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into moist, flaky flesh.
Small slices of pork
Drape over the fish and add fat that bastes the flesh as it bakes.
Buttered bread
Absorbs juices inside the fish, keeping the stuffing moist and flavorful.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and fat that complements the lean fish.
Flour
Coats the outside of the fish, helping the skin brown and seasoning stick.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through, basting occasionally. Fish cooks quickly and dries out if overbaked, so checking doneness and basting with the pan juices keeps the flesh moist while the exterior sets and browns.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, pepper, flour, pork, butter, egg. 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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