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Baked Fish with Oyster Dressing

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Fish with Oyster Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the fish in salt water for 10 minutes.

  2. Season the fish lightly with salt and pepper.

  3. Fill the fish with the dressing mixture.

  4. Tie the fish with string and roast, basting often.

  5. For the dressing, mix oysters, rolled crackers, sweet milk, salt, black pepper, cayenne, celery salt, and tiny pieces of butter carefully.

  6. Spread some dressing on top of the fish as well.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, oyster, milk, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, oyster, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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