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Breslin Baked Bluefish

A baked bluefish topped with a parsley, butter, capers, egg yolk, lemon, onion, vinegar, pickle, salt, and paprika mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Breslin Baked Bluefish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split and bone the bluefish.

  2. Place the fish on a well-buttered baking sheet or oven-proof platter.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the parsley, creamed butter, capers, egg yolks, lemon juice, onion, vinegar, pickles, salt, and paprika.

Bake

  1. Cook the fish for 20 minutes in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Spread the mixture over the fish and continue baking until the fish is fully cooked.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bluefish
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through in the oven.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and set when heated, giving the topping body and richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the fish moist while it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg topping.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny flavour that cuts through the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Spreading the topping over the fish before baking the rest. The egg yolks in the mixture can curdle or cook unevenly if the topping is overheated or left too long at high heat, so it should be spread evenly and baked just until the fish is fully cooked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bluefish, parsley, butter, capers, egg, lemon, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bluefish, parsley, butter, capers, egg, lemon, vinegar. 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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