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Baked Black Bass

Baked black bass stuffed with onion, breadcrumb, butter, anchovy sauce, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,057 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.

Prepare

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

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped onions, bread crumbs, butter, black pepper, salt, and anchovy sauce until the mixture is red.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the mixture and pour the remaining mixture over it.

  2. Sprinkle a little red pepper on top before baking.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Add moisture and savoury sweetness to the stuffing as they soften.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices, giving the stuffing body and a moist texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.
Anchovy sauce
Contributes a salty, savoury depth to the stuffing.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, anchovy, sauce. 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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