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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with salt, butter, pork strips, flour, and served with Hollandaise or butter sauce and Saratoga chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers 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 ↓

Baked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, wipe, and dry the fish.

  2. Rub the fish with coarse sea salt, stuff it, and sew it closed.

  3. Cut gashes two inches apart on each side and skewer the fish into the shape of an 'S'.

  4. Place the fish on a baking sheet and rub it all over with soft butter, salt, and pepper.

  5. Insert narrow strips of fat salt pork into the gashes and dredge the fish well with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) without water, basting when the flour is brown and often afterward.

  2. Remove the strips of pork, skewer, or strings when done, and wipe off all fat or water.

  3. Place the fish on a hot platter and pour Hollandaise sauce around it or serve drawn butter sauce in a sauce boat.

  4. Pile Saratoga chips around the fish and garnish the head with parsley or watercress.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 whole so it stays moist inside the skin.
Flour
Dredged on the outside, it browns in the oven to create a golden, crisp crust.
Butter
Rubbed over the fish, it adds richness and helps the surface brown and taste savoury.
Fat salt pork
Inserted into the gashes, it melts during baking, moistening the flesh and adding savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Basting after the flour browns. Basting only once the flour turns brown keeps the crust from scorching early while still building colour. Repeated basting then keeps the surface moist and evenly browned as the fish cooks through.

Swap the onion

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

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

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