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Fish Stuffed and Baked

A whole fish stuffed with dressing, baked with Worcestershire sauce, lemon, claret, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Stuffed and Baked

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Clean the fish and remove the insides.

  3. Stuff the fish with your chosen dressing.

Season and bake

  1. Place the fish in a baking dish and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Drizzle Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice over the fish.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then dot with butter.

  4. Dust the top with flour and pour claret over it.

  5. Bake in the preheated oven until cooked through.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Whole fish
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish as it bakes.
Flour
Dusted on top to help the surface brown and thicken the pan juices.
Claret (red wine)
Adds acidity and flavour to the pan liquid around the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Whole fish can dry out or stay undercooked in the middle if baked too long or too briefly. Checking that the thickest part flakes easily helps ensure it is cooked evenly without drying the flesh.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sauce, butter, red wine, flour, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sauce, butter, red wine, flour, pepper. 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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