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Baked Fish

A fish baked with coarse sea salt, stuffing, salt pork, flour, pepper, and pork fat, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. 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. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sprinkle the fish with coarse sea salt and fill it with stuffing.

  3. Sew or skewer the edges of the fish together.

  4. Cut gashes on each side of the fish and insert strips of salt pork into them.

  5. Grease a baking sheet and place the fish on it.

  6. Dredge the fish with flour, salt, and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the baking sheet in a baking pan with pieces of pork fat.

  2. Baste the fish every ten minutes.

  3. Serve with a 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. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

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

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Pork and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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, cooking through in the oven.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the fish from within as it cooks.
Pork fat
Adds fat to the baking pan, helping the fish brown and stay moist.
Flour
Dredged over the fish, it helps form a light crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Basting the fish every ten minutes. Regular basting spreads melted fat over the surface, keeping the fish moist and promoting even browning. Letting the surface dry out can leave the fish dry and pale.

“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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