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Bream, Baked

Bream stuffed with forcemeat, baked and basted, served with anchovy or fish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Bream, Baked

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. Empty, wash, and dry the bream without scaling it.

  2. Prepare the forcemeat and stuff it inside the fish, then sew up the opening neatly.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 to 50 minutes, basting occasionally with fat.

  2. Serve with anchovy or other fish sauce.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, omit the forcemeat, wrap the fish in buttered paper, and bake slowly for about 1 hour.

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. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 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

Bream
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so the flesh stays moist inside the skin.
Fish forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and richness to the flesh as it cooks.
Fat for basting
Carries heat over the skin and helps it brown and stay moist during baking.
Anchovy or other fish sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that boosts the fish's natural flavour.

The step that matters

Basting during baking. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting with fat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

“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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