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Dressed Fish in General

A trout baked with sherry, anchovy butter, lemon juice, breadcrumbs, and served with lobster croquettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and lobster work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Dressed Fish in General

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Prepare the trout and place it in the oven to bake for 30 minutes, basting every 5 minutes.

  3. Once done, remove the trout and reduce the sauce if necessary.

Finish the sauce

  1. Incorporate a pat of anchovy butter and the juice of ½ lemon into the sauce.

  2. Pour the sauce over the trout and sprinkle with fine baked bread crumbs.

  3. Return the trout to the oven for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of lobster croquettes.

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. Anchovy + lobstertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Trout
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by baking.
Sherry
Reduces into the sauce, adding acidity and a sweet, nutty aroma.
Anchovy butter
Adds savoury depth and richness to the sauce.
Baked bread crumbs
Sprinkled on top, they add a crisp, browned texture.
Lobster croquettes
Served as a border, adding a crisp, rich contrast to the fish.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce. Reducing concentrates the sherry's flavour and thickens the liquid by evaporating water. If reduced too far it becomes syrupy or salty, while too little leaves it thin and watery on the plate.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, anchovy, butter, bread, lobster. 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.

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