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Baked Fish

A whole fish is seasoned, stuffed, and baked until the flesh separates from the bone, then garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Rub the cleaned fish with coarse sea salt and fill it with stuffing, then sew the edges together.

  2. Cut gashes on each side of the fish and insert strips of salt pork if not using oily fish.

  3. Wrap the tail in greased paper and grease the baking sheet.

  4. Skewer the fish in the shape of an 'S' and place it on the greased sheet with pieces of pork fat.

Bake and serve

  1. Dredge the fish with flour and baste every ten minutes.

  2. Bake for about 10 minutes per pound plus an additional 10 minutes.

  3. The fish is done when the flesh separates from the bone.

  4. Garnish with parsley and serve with drawn butter or fish sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole fish
Provides the main cooked flesh that is baked and served.
Bread crumbs
Form the body of the stuffing and absorb the juices from the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and the drawn butter served alongside.
Flour
Dredged over the fish to help the surface brown and form a light crust.
Salt pork
Adds fat under the skin, keeping lean flesh moist while it bakes.

The step that matters

Judging doneness by flesh separating from the bone. Fish turns dry quickly past doneness, so checking that the flesh flakes away from the bone, rather than relying only on the timed estimate, helps prevent overcooking. Thickness and starting temperature change how long a fish takes.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pork, flour, parsley, butter, bread, 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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