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To Bake Sea Bream

A whole sea bream stuffed with veal, seasoned, baked, and optionally broiled with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,049 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Bake Sea Bream

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Thoroughly wash and wipe the bream with a cloth, keeping the scales intact.

  2. Rub the bream inside and out with pepper, salt, and Cayenne.

  3. Stuff the bream with veal stuffing and sew it up.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the bream in a baking dish and cover it with pieces of butter.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 40 minutes.

  3. Serve as is or broil and serve with white sauce.

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. Pepper + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sea bream
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven as the flesh turns opaque.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, basting the fish as it bakes so it does not dry out.
Veal stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding flavour and moisture to the inside of the fish as it cooks.

The step that matters

Baking the stuffed bream. A stuffed whole fish takes longer to heat through at the centre than its thin parts. Cooking it fully without drying the flesh matters, and the butter on top helps keep the surface moist during baking.

“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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