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Baked Fish

Whole fish baked with salt, pepper, lemon, salt pork, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, wipe, and dry the fish.

  2. Rub the fish with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Stuff the fish and sew it closed.

  4. Cut gashes 2 inches apart and insert strips of salt pork.

  5. Skewer the fish into an S shape and place it on a fish sheet in a dripping pan.

  6. Surround the fish with trimmings from the pork.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the fish with melted butter and flour.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) without water for 1 hour, basting often.

  3. Carefully remove the fish to a hot platter and serve with sauce.

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

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

  2. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat as it bakes, keeping the lean fish moist and adding savory flavor.
Melted butter
Carries heat to the surface and promotes browning for an appetizing golden color.
Flour
Helps the buttered surface brown and form a light crust on the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish.

The step that matters

Basting often during baking. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting with the pan juices and fat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

“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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