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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with onions, lemon, pork slices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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. Season the fish inside and out with salt and pepper.

  3. Place the fish on a large dish and top with sliced onions and lemon juice. Cover and let sit for 1 hour.

  4. Lay the fish in a baking pan with 4 slices of pork underneath and 3 slices on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour melted butter over the fish and bake for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with lemon quarters and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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 and provides the flesh that cooks through in the oven.
Pork slices
Release fat as they cook, keeping the fish moist and adding savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes moisture and a rich, golden surface during baking.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release flavor into the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish and onions.

The step that matters

Letting the fish sit with onions and lemon juice for 1 hour. The acid in lemon juice begins to change the surface proteins of the fish, firming its texture and flavoring it before baking. Too little time leaves the flavor shallow, and the fish should stay cold while it rests.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, lemon, pork, butter, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, lemon, pork, butter, parsley. 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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