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Baked Fish

A fish baked with pork slices, onions, lemon, and butter.

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

Prepare

  1. Rub the fish inside and out with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the fish in a dish with sliced onions and sprinkle with lemon juice.

  3. Cover and let it sit for an hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Lay the fish in a baking pan with 4 slices of pork underneath and 3 slices on top.

  2. Pour melted butter over the fish and bake for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve hot, garnished with lemon quarters and 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. Parsley + lemontop 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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

Pork slices
Fat from the pork bastes the fish and adds savoury flavour as it cooks.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the fish stay moist and brown lightly in the oven.
Lemon juice
Acidity brightens the flavour and helps season the fish during the rest period.
Onions
Sweetness and aroma flavour the fish as it sits and bakes.

The step that matters

Baking the fish. Fish is delicate and cooks quickly, so overbaking dries out the flesh. Check for flaky, opaque flesh that separates easily before removing it from the oven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pork, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pork, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon. 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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