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Dessert

Dressing for Baked Fish

A crumb-based coating for baked fish, made with cracker crumbs, water, pickles, capers, parsley, onion, egg, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dressing for Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the cracker crumbs with enough water to bind them together.

  2. Add the chopped pickle, capers, parsley, grated onion, egg, salt, pepper, and melted butter, then combine all ingredients thoroughly.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cracker crumbs
Form the bulk of the dressing and absorb moisture to hold its body.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape when set.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the crumbs tender.
Grated onion
Adds savory aroma and flavor to the dressing.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, parsley, egg, pepper, 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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