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Baked White Fish

A whole white fish stuffed with onion, bread, egg yolks, and herbs, baked with a dressing of egg yolk, olive oil, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Cut out the backbone of the fish from the head to within 2 inches of the tail.

  2. In a skillet, fry the chopped onion in 1 ounce of butter until soft.

  3. Add the soaked bread, remaining butter, salt, pepper, and parsley or sage. Heat through.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the mixture, sew it up, and wrap it with white tape.

  2. Rub the fish with a little butter and place it in a baking pan with hot water covering the bottom.

  3. Position the fish standing back upward in the pan, bent in the shape of an S.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. For the dressing, mash the hard‑boiled egg yolks with olive oil, mustard, pepper, and vinegar to taste.

  2. Serve the fish with the dressing.

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

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

  2. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

White fish
Forms the main body that is stuffed, baked and served as the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the fish brown lightly when rubbed on its skin.
Stale bread
Soaks up liquid and gives the stuffing a soft, moist, binding texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and enrich it, and set gently with the heat to hold it together.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the dressing to give it a smooth, rich, thickened body.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smoothness to the dressing, helping it emulsify with the mustard.

The step that matters

Stuffing the fish and baking in hot water. The stuffing must be fully heated but not overcooked, since beaten egg yolks can scramble or dry out. The hot water bath in the pan moderates the oven heat so the fish cooks gently and stays moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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