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Fish Stuffed and Baked

A whole fish stuffed with a breadcrumb and onion mixture, baked with butter, claret, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Fish Stuffed and Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Trim the fins of the fish.

  2. Wipe the fish clean and dry, inside and out.

  3. Melt a large lump of butter in a frying pan without cooking it. Add the dried bread crumbs to the melted butter, stirring until they absorb it.

  4. Add the chopped onion to the bread crumbs. Fry the onion in butter.

  5. Add parsley, lemon juice, cayenne, salt, and pepper to the mixture.

  6. Fill the fish with dressing.

  7. Sew the fish closed with coarse thread.

Bake

  1. Place the sewn fish in a roasting pan.

  2. Dot the fish with butter.

  3. Add boiling water to the pan.

  4. Season the fish.

  5. Bake the fish at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes, basting frequently.

  6. Add the claret, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice to the pan.

  7. Continue baking until done, about 45 minutes total. Check that the fish is done when the flesh easily separates from the bone.

  8. Transfer the fish to a hot dish.

  9. Garnish with parsley and lemon.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add more water if necessary to the pan.

  2. Add the remaining claret to the pan.

  3. Bring the liquid to a boil.

  4. Stir in 1 teaspoon of butter and 2 teaspoons of flour mixed with some sauce. Boil for 2 minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce over the fish.

  6. Serve.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 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

Whole fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the pan liquid until the flesh separates.
Dried bread crumbs
Absorb butter and form the stuffing that fills and flavours the fish.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stuffing.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the pan liquid and sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the pan liquid and sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the pan liquid into a smooth sauce when mixed with it and boiled.

The step that matters

Checking doneness by flaking. Fish cooks quickly and dries out past doneness. Flesh that separates easily from the bone shows it is cooked through, so checking early keeps it moist.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sauce, butter, bread, parsley, lemon, 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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