Skip to main content
Main

Baked Fish

Baked fish topped with bacon and finished with a butter, flour, and milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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 the fish

  1. Make about four slashes on each side of the fish and insert pieces of bacon.

  2. Rub the fish with butter and dust with flour.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a pan and pour in boiling water, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 minutes, basting often and adding more water if needed.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. When done, remove the fish and make the sauce in the same pan.

  2. Add flour, milk, and a little butter to the pan, stirring to combine.

  3. Stir in chopped parsley, celery salt, and paprika.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fish on the platter and serve.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the fish from within as it cooks.
Flour
Dusted on the fish and stirred into the sauce to thicken it and give body.
Milk
Combines with the flour and butter to form a creamy, thickened sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the fish brown and carries flavour into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds a little acidity that brightens the fish and the sauce.

The step that matters

Basting during the bake. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in the oven. Basting with the liquid in the pan keeps the surface moist and the flesh tender, and adding water as it reduces prevents scorching and sticking.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, vinegar, sauce, milk, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, vinegar, sauce, milk, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes