Skip to main content
Main

Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with a bread and celery dressing, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sprinkle salt and pepper inside and outside the fish.

  3. In a bowl, combine the moistened bread and chopped celery to make the dressing.

  4. Fill the fish with the dressing and sew or tie it closed.

Bake

  1. Dust the fish lightly with flour and place it on celery stalks in a baking dish.

  2. Dot the fish with bits of butter and add 1½ pints of water to the dish.

  3. Bake for 1½ hours.

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 + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and held moist by the stuffing.
Dry bread
Absorbs tomato juice and forms a moist, soft stuffing inside the fish.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and crisp texture to the stuffing and lifts the fish off the pan.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the fish surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Bake for 1½ hours. Baking too long dries out the fish, while too short leaves the centre undercooked. The stuffing and thickness of the fish both slow heat reaching the centre, so the fish should be checked for flaking at the thickest part.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, bread, tomato, flour, butter. 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.

More baked fish recipes

with Tomatoes 7with Breadcrumbs 6Stuffed 6in Batter 4with Pork Slices 4Sauce for 4 See all 221 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes