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Stuffings for Fish

A savory mixture of bread crumbs, onion, parsley, suet, and egg used as a filling for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Stuffings for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in water until soft, then press out all the water.

  2. Fry the minced onion in butter until translucent.

  3. Add the soaked bread crumbs, chopped parsley, chopped suet, pepper, and salt to the pan. Cook for a moment, then remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soaked and pressed, they form the bulk and soft body of the stuffing.
Egg
Binds the mixture together as it sets when stirred in off the heat.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich in flavor.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and savory aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg off the heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it after removing the pan from heat binds the stuffing without scrambling the egg into lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, parsley, pepper, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, parsley, pepper, egg. 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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