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Stuffing for Baked Fish

A crumbly bread crumb mixture stuffed into fish, baked with pork strips and served with potatoes, lemon, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stuffing for Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, salt, pepper, onion juice, parsley, cucumber pickles, capers (if using), and melted butter. Mix until slightly crumbly; if crumbs are not too dry, no additional moisture is needed.

Stuff and shape the fish

  1. Stuff the mixture into the fish, sew it up, and shape it into a horseshoe or letter S.

  2. Cut gashes on each side of the fish to help it hold its shape and fill them with pork strips.

  3. Skewer and tie the fish in shape, then place pork strips in the bottom of a pan.

  4. Rest the fish on the pork strips and add hot water to the pan.

  5. Baste with hot water mixed with a little salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake the fish for 25 to 30 minutes.

  2. After 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 350°F (175°C).

  3. When done, remove from the oven, take off the skewers and pork strips, and garnish with Saratoga potatoes, lemon points, and 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. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices to form a moist, lightly crumbly stuffing that fills the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and helps it brown in the oven.
Onion juice
Adds savory onion flavor to the stuffing without adding bulk.

The step that matters

Stuffing moisture. Bread crumbs that are too dry will not hold together or stay moist during baking, so the stuffing can crumble or dry out. Check the texture before stuffing the fish.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, onion, parsley, cucumber, butter, pork):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, onion, parsley, cucumber, butter, pork. 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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