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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with salt, pepper, oil or butter, topped with eggs, served with drawn butter sauce, hard‑boiled eggs, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease the bottom of an open baking pan.

  3. Season the fish inside and out with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Rub the fish thoroughly with oil, butter, or lard, and place it in the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Break 1-2 eggs on top of the fish, spreading them evenly.

  2. Bake in the oven on the upper grate until golden brown.

  3. Serve with drawn butter sauce mixed with chopped hard-boiled eggs, lemon slices, and fresh parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Eggs
Raw eggs spread over the fish set and brown as they bake, forming a golden crust.
Oil, butter, or lard
Fat coats the fish skin, promoting even browning and keeping the surface from drying out.
Whole fish
Main ingredient that is cooked through in the oven and served as the centrepiece.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking on the upper grate lets the top brown while the fish cooks through. Judging doneness by colour alone can leave the thickest part undercooked, so the fish should be checked for flakiness at its thickest point.

“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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