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Baked Carp

A carp stuffed, coated in breadcrumbs, baked with stock, onions, herbs, and a sauce of butter, flour, mustard, and soy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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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 fish

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

  2. Brush the carp all over with egg yolk, then cover it with plenty of bread crumbs.

  3. Baste the carp with oiled butter.

Bake

  1. Place the carp in a deep dish with stock, onions, bay leaves, and herbs.

  2. Add port wine and anchovies to the dish, then cover the dish.

  3. Bake the carp for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Keep the fish hot.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Heat the cooking liquid with butter, flour, mustard, Cayenne, and soy.

  2. Serve the fish garnished with lemon, parsley, and horseradish.

  3. Pour the gravy into a sauce tureen.

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

Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumbs to the fish skin so the coating stays on while baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the fish from drying out.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the cooking liquid, which becomes the base of the gravy.
Anchovies
Melt into the cooking liquid, adding savoury depth to the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the coating brown.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Keep the fish hot. Fish protein sets and toughens and then dries out when overcooked or left too long. Holding it gently warm, rather than hot, keeps the flesh moist until serving.

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.

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