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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with a breadcrumb and salt pork dressing, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

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 the fish

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

  2. Clean, wash, and dry the fish. Split it down the middle.

  3. Sprinkle the fish with salt and lay it inside down on a buttered baking dish.

Stuff and bake

  1. Mix bread crumbs, butter, salt, chopped salt pork, and egg to make the dressing. Add parsley and onions if desired.

  2. Fill the fish with the dressing and sew it up.

  3. Place the fish in a large baking dish, add water and a little salt.

  4. Bake for 1.5 hours, basting frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. After removing the fish, thicken the gravy and pour it over the fish.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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 while staying moist under basting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and egg to form a binding dressing that holds its shape inside the fish.
Egg
Binds the dressing so it holds together when the fish is filled and baked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the dressing and helps the crumbs brown lightly.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the dressing as it cooks.

The step that matters

Basting during the bake. Frequent basting keeps the surface and fish moist as the water and juices reduce, helping prevent the flesh from drying out over 1.5 hours of oven heat.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, pork, egg, onion):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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

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