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Baked Fish

A fish stuffed with forcemeat, seasoned, baked, and served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. 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 the fish

  1. Rub the cleaned fish with coarse sea salt and fill it with highly-seasoned forcemeat.

  2. Sew the fish up and place the tail in the mouth.

  3. Sprinkle the fish with powdered cracker, sweet herbs, cloves, and small bits of butter.

Bake and baste

  1. Pour 1 pint of water into the baking pan.

  2. Bake the fish at 350°F (175°C) for about 2 hours.

  3. Baste the fish with butter halfway through baking.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour the gravy into a saucepan, add browned flour, pepper, and cloves until highly seasoned.

  2. Garnish the dish with lemon and balls of the forcemeat.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Fish + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  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. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by gentle baking.
Highly-seasoned forcemeat
Fills the fish and adds seasoned, moist stuffing that flavours the flesh from inside.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the fish during baking.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, deeper colour and flavour.
Powdered cracker
Adds bulk and absorbs juices, giving the stuffing and crust a light texture.

The step that matters

Baste the fish with butter halfway through baking. A long bake can dry out the flesh. Basting with melted butter adds fat and moisture to the surface, helping keep the fish tender and the top golden.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, meat, butter, flour, pepper. 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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