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Baked Whitefish

A stuffed whitefish baked with bread, onion, butter, sage, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Whitefish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scale and clean the fish, then cut off the head.

  2. Remove the bones by fastening the head to the table and pulling the bones downward.

  3. Soak the stale bread in warm water, then squeeze it dry.

Make the stuffing

  1. Chop the onion and fry it in butter.

  2. Add the soaked bread, ½ cup of butter, salt, pepper, and sage. Heat through.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the yolks of 2 beaten eggs.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the mixture, sew it up, and tie it with white tape.

  2. Rub the fish with butter and place it in a pan with a little hot water.

  3. Bake until brown.

  4. Serve with drawn butter.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish, which holds the stuffing while it bakes.
Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed dry, it absorbs moisture and gives the stuffing body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the outside of the fish brown.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together and help it set as it cooks.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Stuff and bake until brown. Overfilling the fish can split the skin and let stuffing escape, and baking too long dries the flesh. Keeping the fish moist with butter and a little hot water in the pan helps it cook evenly.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whitefish, bread, onion, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, bread, onion, butter, pepper, 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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