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Flounder, Red Snapper or Red Fish

Baked whole fish with bacon, flour, mustard sauce, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Flounder, Red Snapper or Red 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 fish

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

  2. In a large drip pan, layer thin slices of bacon, season the bacon with salt and pepper, and add a bit of onion.

  3. Place the whole fish on top, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and spread with lard or butter.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake for 3 hours.

  2. For the sauce, use the drippings in the pan and add 2 heaping tablespoons of flour. Stir until smooth, then add 1 tablespoon of mustard and enough water to reach the desired consistency.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Thin slices of bacon
Bacon fat bastes the fish and its drippings become the base of the sauce.
Whole fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and flakes as it bakes slowly.
Flour
Coats the fish and thickens the pan drippings into a smooth sauce.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich, moist surface on the fish.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that cuts the richness of the bacon and fat.

The step that matters

Making the sauce from the drippings. Flour must be stirred smoothly into the hot drippings so it cooks without lumps and thickens evenly. Adding water gradually lets you reach the desired consistency without thinning the sauce too much.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, fish, flour, butter, sauce, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, fish, flour, butter, sauce, mustard. 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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