Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Smelts

Stuffed smelts are smelt fish filled with a mixture of oysters, mushrooms, bread crumbs, and herbs, baked in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Smelts

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. Prepare a forcemeat by mixing minced oysters, chopped mushrooms, bread crumbs, butter, herbs, and seasoning.

  2. Remove the bones from the smelts and stuff them with the forcemeat.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the stuffed smelts in a baking dish.

  2. Pour over the stock or milk mixed with butter, lemon juice, and minced onion.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Smelts
Form the main body of the dish, holding the forcemeat filling while cooking.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the forcemeat filling.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat and absorb moisture so the filling holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the filling brown lightly.
White stock or milk
Provides liquid that keeps the fish moist as it bakes in the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Remove the bones from the smelts. If bones are left in or the fish is torn while boning, the stuffing can spill out and the fish can be hard to eat. Careful boning keeps each smelt whole so the forcemeat stays inside during baking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, oyster, mushroom, bread, butter, milk, onion):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, oyster, mushroom, bread, butter, milk, onion. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes