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Hake, Baked

A baked hake dish with parsley, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and a cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hake, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the fish.

  2. Place the slices side by side in a baking dish.

  3. Dredge the fish with flour and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Spread the parsley over the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread butter over the fish.

  2. Add small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake gently for about 30 minutes, basting occasionally.

  4. Transfer the fish to a hot dish.

  5. Strain the cooking liquid over the fish.

  6. Serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hake
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender portions.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the fish from drying out in the oven.
Flour
Dredged on the fish, it helps the surface brown and gives the cooking liquid body.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the fish and its cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Bake gently and baste. Gentle heat cooks the delicate fish through without toughening its proteins, while occasional basting with the melting butter keeps the surface moist. Overheating dries and firms the flesh quickly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, pepper, flour. 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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