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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with a pork and cracker coating, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Scrape and wash the fish if it has scales.

  2. Rub 1 tablespoon of salt into the fish.

  3. Roll the crackers or bread crumbs very fine.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mix the crumbs with parsley, 1 tablespoon of chopped pork, ½ teaspoon of pepper, and ½ tablespoon of salt.

  2. Moisten the mixture with cold water.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the body of the fish and fasten it with a skewer.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking pan and place the fish inside the pan.

  2. Cut gashes across the fish, about ½ inch deep and 2 inches long.

  3. Insert strips of the remaining pork into the gashes.

  4. Dredge the fish with flour, salt, and pepper.

  5. Cover the bottom of the pan with hot water.

  6. Place the pan in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

Baste and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour, basting every 15 minutes with the pan gravy and dredging with flour, salt, and pepper each time.

  2. Renew the water in the pan as needed.

  3. Lift the fish onto a serving dish and pour Hollandaise sauce, tomato sauce, or your choice of sauce around it.

  4. Garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 and provides the cooked flesh that is served.
Crackers or bread crumbs
Absorb juices and moisture inside the fish, holding the stuffing together as it bakes.
Salt pork
Its fat bastes the fish and adds richness and savory flavor as it cooks.
Flour
Dredging helps the surface brown and thickens the pan gravy used for basting.

The step that matters

Renew the water in the pan as needed. Water in the pan keeps the baking dish from scorching and helps form the gravy used for basting. If it dries out, the pan can burn and the gravy turns bitter and dark.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, pork, pepper, 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.

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