Name: To Bake White Fish
Ingredients: 1 whole white fish, cleaned and dried; Coarse sea salt and pepper, mixed with flour; Lard for frying

Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Bake White Fish

Ingredients

1 whole white fish, cleaned and dried
Coarse sea salt and pepper, mixed with flour
Lard for frying

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

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).
Rub the fish inside and outside with the salt and pepper mixture.
Heat the lard in a baking dish.

Bake

Bake the fish for 45 minutes.

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.

Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Fish + flourtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,532 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole white fish: Forms the main protein; its flesh cooks through gently in the oven's dry heat.
Lard: Fat that coats the fish and dish, adding richness and helping the skin brown.

“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.