Skip to main content
Main

Baked Carp

A carp stuffed with seasoning, baked with stock and herbs, served with a mustard‑cayenne gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Carp

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 carp

  1. Clean the carp. Stuff it as you would for soles, then sew it up.

  2. Brush the carp with egg yolk and cover it with bread crumbs.

  3. Baste with oiled butter.

Bake

  1. Place in a deep dish. Add stock, sliced onions, bay leaves, herbs, port wine, and anchovies.

  2. Cover and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Keep the fish warm while you prepare the gravy.

  2. Pour the cooking liquid into a saucepan. Add butter, mustard, cayenne, and soy sauce, then heat.

  3. Serve the fish garnished with lemon, parsley, and horseradish, with the gravy in a sauceboat.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Basil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so it stays moist inside its skin.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the fish to help the bread crumbs adhere and brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust that browns during baking.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid that becomes the gravy.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the cooking liquid, adding savoury depth to the gravy.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the butter and wine gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping the fish warm while making the gravy. Fish protein sets and dries out quickly once it stops cooking above its gentle baking heat, so it should be kept warm and not left to cool while the sauce is finished.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, fish, basil, thyme, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes