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Baked Black Bass

Baked Black Bass is a fish dish baked with butter, parsley, pepper, and a sherry‑ketchup sauce served over boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,099 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Black Bass

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.

Bake the fish

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

  2. Salt the cleaned black bass well and place it in a baking pan with ½ cup of water.

  3. Strew flaked butter on top, along with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  4. Bake for about one hour, basting often until cooked through.

  5. Serve on a heated platter, garnished with parsley and lemon.

Make the sauce and potatoes

  1. For the sauce, combine sherry and ketchup in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the sauce by adding 1 teaspoon of flour mixed with fish gravy.

  3. For the potatoes, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan.

  4. Add finely chopped parsley, salt, and pepper to taste.

  5. Stir in a small cup of sweet cream thickened with 1 tablespoon of flour.

  6. Pour the sauce over the boiled potatoes.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Black bass
Forms the main dish; baking with butter and water keeps it moist and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the fish and into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and cream so it becomes smooth and coats the potatoes.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body to the potato sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through, basting often. Fish cooks quickly and dries out easily in dry oven heat. Frequent basting with pan juices keeps the surface moist while the flesh cooks through evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, sherry, ketchup, flour, sauce, cream):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Leekbetter flavor fit
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, sherry, ketchup, flour, sauce, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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