Name: Baked Bass
Ingredients: 1 cup pounded crackers or bread crumbs; 1 egg; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon ground clove; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 small nutmeg; 1 egg white; 2 tablespoons melted butter

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Bass

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

Make a filling by mixing pounded crackers or bread crumbs, egg, pepper, clove, salt, and butter.
Fill the bass with the mixture and sew it up.

Assemble and bake

Grate nutmeg over the top and sprinkle with more pounded crackers.
Pour egg white and melted butter on top.
Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C) in the serving dish.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

Pounded crackers or bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and form a dry, tender stuffing that holds its shape.
Egg: Binds the stuffing so it holds together when baked and sliced.
Egg white: Sets on the surface as the fish bakes, helping form a light crust.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown as it bakes.

Swap the clove

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

Cinnamonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Marjoramfits about as well
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, pepper, butter, nutmeg. 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.