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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with a breadcrumb and herb crust, seasoned with salt, pepper, and savory, and cooked with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and summer savory work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 671 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked 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

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

  2. Salt the fish inside and out.

  3. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, salt, pepper, summer savory, and butter.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the dressing and place it in a baking dish.

  2. Add water to the dish and bake for 1.5 hours.

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 + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Summer savory + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through gently in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices to form a moist stuffing that keeps the fish tender.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the crumb stuffing and helps it brown lightly.
Water
Creates steam in the baking dish, helping the fish cook gently without drying.

The step that matters

Adding water to the dish. Water in the baking dish creates steam that keeps the fish moist during the long bake. Without it, the thin fish edges and the stuffing can dry out before the centre is cooked.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, bread, butter. 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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