Skip to main content
Main

Baked Fish

A whole fish stuffed with a breadcrumb mixture and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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. Clean and wash the fish thoroughly.

Stuff and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, fat, minced onion, sage, chopped celery, and chopped parsley.

  2. Stuff the fish with the breadcrumb mixture.

  3. Place the stuffed fish in a baking pan.

  4. Cover the fish with strips of salt pork or brush the surface with additional fat.

  5. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until cooked through.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  3. Sage + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 in the oven to become flaky and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the fat and juices, forming a moist stuffing that keeps the fish from drying out.
Fat
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and flavour to the breadcrumb stuffing as it softens during baking.
Celery
Contributes a mild, fresh crunch and aromatic flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and dries out past doneness, so checking it at the low end of the 20 to 30 minute range helps keep it moist and flaky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, sage, celery, parsley, pork):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, sage, celery, parsley, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes