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Baked Fish

Whole white fish stuffed with salt and salt pork, baked and served with Hollandaise or butter sauce and Saratoga chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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. If the fish is slimy, scald it with hot water before cleaning.

  3. Rub salt inside and out, stuff the fish, and sew it closed with soft darning cotton, leaving a knot at one end.

  4. Cut gashes two inches apart on each side, alternating them, and skewer the fish into an S or O shape.

  5. Place the fish on a baking sheet, rub with soft butter, salt, and pepper, and insert strips of salt pork into the gashes.

Bake and baste

  1. Dredge with flour if desired, then bake in a hot oven (400°F/200°C) without water.

  2. Baste with hot water and butter as soon as it begins to brown, repeating every ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the fish from the baking sheet and place it on a hot platter.

  2. Remove the string, wipe off excess water or fat, and take out the pieces of pork.

  3. Pour Hollandaise sauce around the fish or serve with drawn butter sauce flavored with lemon.

  4. Pile Saratoga chips lightly 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

White fish
Provides the main body of the dish, cooking through in the dry oven heat.
Salt pork
Strips inserted into the gashes release fat that keeps the fish moist and adds savory flavor.
Soft butter
Adds fat for richness and browning on the skin, and is basted over the fish.
Flour
Optional light dusting that helps the surface brown and form a slightly crisp coating.
Hollandaise sauce
Rich, acidic emulsion of butter and egg yolks that adds creaminess and balances the mild fish.

The step that matters

Basting with hot water and butter. Basting starts only once the surface begins to brown and is repeated every ten minutes. Adding water and fat keeps the surface from drying and scorching while the interior cooks through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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