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Baked Fish

A fish stuffed with bread, pork, herbs, onion, and seasonings, baked with wine, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 stuffing by mixing the bread, pork, sweet herbs, onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stuff the fish with the mixture and place it in a baking pan.

Bake

  1. Add water to the pan to keep the fish moist.

  2. Pour the red wine over the fish and sprinkle with flour and butter.

  3. Bake until the fish is cooked through.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 its stuffing.
Bread
Bulks out the stuffing and soaks up juices, keeping it light and moist.
Pork
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping it from drying out.
Red wine
Adds acidity and flavour, and moistens the pan juices around the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a light sauce as the dish bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until the fish is cooked through. Fish is lean and cooks quickly, so it dries out and toughens if overbaked. Check that the thickest part flakes easily and is opaque, and remove it promptly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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