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Baked Cod, Black Fish, Haddock, Etc

A baked fish stuffed with bread, seasoned, and topped with salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Cod, Black Fish, Haddock, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Spread butter on the bread slices and season the bread slices with salt and pepper.

  2. Stuff the bread inside the fish, then sew the stuffed fish up with a needle and thread.

  3. Skewer the lip and tail together with a piece of twine.

  4. Place the fish in a serving dish.

Bake

  1. Top the fish with 2-3 thin slices of salt pork, sprinkle salt over the fish, and dust the fish with flour.

  2. Bake for 1 hour for a 4-pound fish, basting the fish several times with the cooking juices.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the bread stuffing, helping it taste moist and savory.
Salt pork
Its fat bastes the fish as it cooks, adding moisture and savory flavor.
Flour
Dusted on the fish, it helps the surface brown and form a light crust.
Little slices of bread
Forms the stuffing that fills the fish, absorbing juices and adding body.

The step that matters

Basting the fish several times with the cooking juices. Basting spreads moisture and fat over the surface as it bakes, helping keep the flesh from drying out and encouraging an even golden color.

“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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