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Baked Red Snapper

A baked whole red snapper served with a tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Snapper and sauce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Red Snapper

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

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Stuff the cleaned red snapper with a mixture of bread crumbs, chopped onion, salt, and black pepper.

  3. Place the fish in a baking dish and pour 1 pint of water over it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the strained tomato juice until thick.

  2. Add butter, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and Worcestershire sauce to the tomato mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. When the fish is nearly done, baste it with some of the tomato sauce.

  2. Serve the remaining sauce alongside the fish at the table.

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. Snapper + saucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Red snapper
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into moist, flaky flesh.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices inside the fish, helping the stuffing hold together and stay moist.
Tomatoes
Reduced into a thick sauce that adds acidity and body to the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the tomato sauce, softening its sharpness.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the bread crumb stuffing.

The step that matters

Baste when the fish is nearly done. Basting too early, before the fish is nearly cooked, can leave the sauce to thicken and darken on the surface before the flesh is done. Adding it near the end keeps the fish moist and coats it with flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, bread, pepper, tomato, butter, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, bread, pepper, tomato, butter, sauce. 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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