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Baked Trout

A trout baked with butter, bread crumbs, and salt, finished with a gravy of butter, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 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.

Prepare

  1. Open and clean the trout, removing all scales. Wash and dry them.

  2. Prepare a dressing similar to that used for bluefish and fill the trout. Sew it up.

Bake

  1. Place the trout in a baking pan. Cover with bits of butter, bread crumbs, and salt.

  2. Add a little water to the pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 to 2 hours, basting often.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once cooked, remove the trout and add hot water, butter, salt, and flour to the pan drippings. Bring to a boil and pour 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

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

  4. Salmon + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together941 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 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

Lake or salmon trout
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the fish moist and enriches the pan drippings for the gravy.
Fine bread crumbs
Soak up juices in the dressing and crisp on top, adding texture.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings and water into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Baking the trout for 1 to 2 hours. Fish proteins toughen and dry out when overheated, so the trout should be checked for doneness and basted often to keep it moist.

“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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