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Baked White Fish

A whole white fish is seasoned, stuffed with a breadcrumb and milk mixture, then baked with optional pork or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Scale and clean the fish thoroughly, then salt it well inside and let it sit for about an hour.

  2. Wash the fish and prepare the dressing by mixing bread crumbs, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Fill the fish with the dressing and sew it up to maintain its shape.

Bake

  1. Dredge the fish with cornmeal and place it in a pan with 1 pint of water.

  2. If desired, lay slices of pickled pork or breakfast bacon on top of the fish.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and held together by stitching.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter to form a moist, tender stuffing inside the fish.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dressing and keeps it moist as it bakes.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs so the dressing holds together without drying out.
Cornmeal
Forms a light coating on the outside that helps the surface brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Filling and sewing the fish. If the fish is overfilled or the stitching is loose, the dressing can swell and burst out during baking, and the fish may lose its shape. Filling it firmly but not tightly keeps the fish intact.

“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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