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Baked Fish

A fish fillet coated with butter, herbs, spices, and egg yolk, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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

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

  2. Rub a little butter inside the fish.

Stuff and bake

  1. Mix together the herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, lime juice, and chopped parsley.

  2. Bind the mixture with the egg yolk and stuff it into the fish.

  3. Bake the fish, basting occasionally with fat or covering with greased paper.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lime + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together547 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Binds the herb mixture together so it holds inside the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the fish and helps it brown lightly during baking.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish and herbs.

The step that matters

Baking the fish with basting or covering. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in the oven. Basting with fat or covering with greased paper keeps moisture in the flesh during baking.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limethe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, egg. 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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