Skip to main content
Main

Baked Fish

A baked fish dish with tomatoes, onion, curry powder, wine, stock, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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

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

  2. Remove all bones and shell from the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer the fish in a baking dish with sliced tomatoes and onion.

  2. Sprinkle with curry powder, then add wine and stock.

  3. Bake for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the lid, add fried slices of bread, and serve in soup plates.

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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + white winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,226 recipes

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

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 and becomes flaky and tender as it bakes.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that blend into the cooking liquid.
Spanish onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the stock.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Stock
Provides the moist cooking liquid that gently poaches the fish.

The step that matters

Bake for 1 hour. Fish is delicate and can dry out or turn tough if overcooked, so the bake should be watched and the fish checked for flakiness. The stock and tomatoes help keep it moist while it cooks.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, tomato, white wine, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, tomato, white wine, bread. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes