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Baked Fish

A baked fish served with tomato sauce, lard, and crumbled hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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

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

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a baking pan and dust it lightly with flour.

  2. Add the chopped tomatoes, lard, salt, black pepper, and red pepper.

  3. Pour the water over the fish and baste it often while cooking.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, mix the crumbled hard-boiled eggs with the gravy.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hepten-3-one (metal).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Fish
Forms the main protein that bakes until flaky and cooked through.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, helping build the sauce or gravy as they cook.
Lard
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the fish brown lightly.
Hard boiled eggs
Crumbled into the gravy to add richness and a firmer, grainy texture.

The step that matters

Basting the fish with the water. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist so the fish does not dry out in the oven's dry heat, while the liquid helps form the gravy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, pepper, egg. 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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