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Baked Trout

A whole trout baked with butter, lemon, shrimp, and a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Trout

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.

Bake the trout

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake the trout for 12 minutes per pound, basting with melted butter three or four times.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and stir in 1 tablespoon of flour until combined.

  2. Once the fish is done, strain the pan juices into the saucepan and stir until thickened.

  3. Add salt, pepper, caramel, and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, then mix in ½ cup of chopped shrimp.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, reduce it with boiling water and boil for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Garnish the fish with parsley and lemon 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Trout
Is the main protein; cooks through in the oven while basted with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture while basting the fish and forming the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth sauce when cooked with melted butter.
Shrimp
Adds savoury flavour and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter before liquid is added, otherwise it stays starchy and lumpy. Adding too much boiling water thins the sauce, so reduce it gently.

“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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