Skip to main content
Main

Baked Fish

A fish baked with a bread crumb and salt pork dressing, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Fish

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.

Prepare

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

  2. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, coarse sea salt, chopped salt pork, parsley, onions, and the egg.

  3. Fill the body of the fish with the dressing and sew it up.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a large baking dish and lay pieces of salt pork across it.

  2. Add 1 pint of water and a little salt to the pan.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours, basting frequently.

  4. After removing the fish, thicken the gravy and pour it over the fish.

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

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

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, cooked whole around the dressing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the dressing so it holds its shape while baking.
Egg
Helps bind the dressing together, giving it structure once heated.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the fish and pan juices.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the dressing, improving flavor and moisture.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during baking. Regular basting carries fat and pan liquid over the fish's surface, helping keep the flesh moist as it cooks through in the oven's dry heat.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, pork, onion, egg):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, pork, onion, 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.

More baked fish recipes

with Tomatoes 7with Breadcrumbs 6Stuffed 6in Batter 4with Pork Slices 4Sauce for 4 See all 221 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes