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Baked Fish

A fish seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, and bread dressing, baked and served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Thoroughly salt the fish and fill it with bread dressing.

  2. Garnish the fish with chopped onion.

  3. Add some onion to the dressing.

  4. Season the fish with pepper and flour as you would for roast beef.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C), basting often.

  2. Serve with white 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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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, cooking through in the oven while staying moist when basted.
Bread dressing
Fills the fish, adding moisture and flavour as it cooks inside the body.
Flour
Dusted on the fish, it helps the outer surface brown and form a light crust.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to both the stuffing and the outside of the fish.

The step that matters

Basting often during baking. Regular basting moistens the surface as it cooks, helping prevent the fish from drying out while the flour helps it brown.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, chicken, onion, pepper, flour, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, chicken, onion, pepper, flour, sauce. 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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