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Baked Fish with Oyster Dressing

A baked fish stuffed with a mixture of oysters, crackers, milk, and spices, topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Fish with Oyster Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the fish in salt water for 10 minutes.

  2. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mix oysters, rolled crackers, sweet milk, salt, black pepper, cayenne, celery salt, and tiny pieces of butter carefully.

Stuff and roast

  1. Fill the fish with the dressing mixture.

  2. Spread some dressing on top of the fish as well.

  3. Tie the fish with string and roast, basting often.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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, cooked through by roasting around the stuffing.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and moisture to the dressing.
Rolled crackers
Bind the dressing and soak up milk and juices to give it body.
Sweet milk
Moistens the crackers and keeps the dressing tender as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the dressing and fish brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Tie the fish with string and roast, basting often.. Stuffed fish cooks slowly from the outside in, so the thickest part can dry out before the dressing is hot. Frequent basting with the pan juices adds moisture and helps the skin brown evenly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, oyster, milk, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, oyster, milk, butter. 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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