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Baked Fish

A salmon trout baked with a bread crumb and butter stuffing, seasoned with salt, pepper, herbs, and optional ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Fish

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 the dressing

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, savory herbs, and minced ham (if using).

  3. Combine the dressing with an egg or milk.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the fish with the dressing and sew it up.

  2. Place the fish in a baking dish with a little water and dot with dripping.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours, basting frequently.

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. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon trout
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through as the centre of the stuffed fish.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the dressing, absorbing moisture and giving the stuffing a soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat to the dressing, enriching flavour and keeping the crumbs moist as they bake.
Egg
Binds the dressing together so it holds its shape inside the fish.

The step that matters

Basting during the bake. Fish is lean and dries out easily in the oven. Frequent basting with the liquid and fat in the dish keeps the surface moist and helps the flesh stay tender over the long bake.

“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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