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Baking

Baked Fish

A fish cleaned and scaled, soaked in salt water, baked, and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the fish in cold water with a little coarse sea salt for 1 hour.

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

  3. Place a gridiron over a dripping pan with a little hot water.

Bake and brown

  1. Bake the fish for 30 minutes if small, or 1 hour if large.

  2. Butter the top of the fish just before it is done, then allow it to brown.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and its milk solids help the top brown.

The step that matters

Butter the fish just before it is done. Butter contains milk solids and sugars that brown and can scorch if left in a hot oven too long. Adding it late lets the top brown without burning.

“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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