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Baking

Baked Fish

Baked Fish is a fish baked with a breadcrumb and salt pork dressing, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, coarse sea salt, chopped salt pork, and egg.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the fish with the dressing and sew it up.

  2. Place the fish in a large baking dish and lay strips of salt pork on top.

  3. Add water and a little salt to the pan.

  4. Bake for 1.5 hours, basting frequently.

  5. After removing the fish, thicken the gravy and pour it over the fish.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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, cooking through in the oven while holding the dressing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and butter to form a soft, cohesive stuffing inside the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the dressing moist and flavorful as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the dressing together so it holds its shape when the fish is stuffed.
Salt pork
Renders fat during baking, adding savory flavor and moisture to the fish and dressing.

The step that matters

Sewing up the stuffed fish. If the stuffing is packed too tightly or the seam is loose, the dressing can swell and spill out during baking. Filling loosely and closing the fish securely keeps the stuffing contained and cooking evenly.

“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.

More baked fish recipes

with Tomatoes 7with Breadcrumbs 6Stuffed 6in Batter 4with Pork Slices 4Sauce for 4 See all 221 →

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