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Baked Hake

A whole hake is seasoned, coated with bread crumbs, and baked with water, vinegar, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Hake

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. Wash the fish in salt and water.

  2. Rub the fish with vinegar and let it sit for 1 hour.

  3. Roll the fish in a cloth and let it dry.

Make the crumb coating

  1. Sift stale bread through a wire sieve to make crumbs.

  2. Mix crumbs with pepper, salt, nutmeg, herbs, and lemon rind.

  3. Brush the fish with beaten egg and sprinkle half the crumbs over it.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a deep baking dish on a drainer.

  2. Pour water and vinegar around the fish, not over it.

  3. Add minced shallot and sliced carrot (and optional onions and potatoes).

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Hake
The main protein; it cooks through in the oven to become flaky and tender.
Stale bread crumbs
Form a dry, golden coating that helps shield the fish surface from drying out.
Beaten egg
Binds the crumbs to the fish so the coating stays in place during baking.
Vinegar
Acidity that is rubbed on the fish and added to the dish liquid, adding tang.
Shallot
Adds a mild, savoury aroma that flavours the liquid around the fish.

The step that matters

Pour the water and vinegar around the fish, not over it. Pouring liquid over the fish would soak the crumb coating and wash it away. Keeping the liquid around the fish lets it cook gently while the coating stays crisp.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, bread, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, egg, shallot):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, bread, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, egg, shallot. 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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