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Baked Cod, Black Fish, Haddock, Etc

A baked fish stuffed with buttered bread, seasoned, topped with salt pork, flour, and baked for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Cod, Black Fish, Haddock, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Spread slices of bread with butter, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Stuff the bread inside the fish and sew it up with a needle and thread.

  3. Skewer the lip and tail together with a small skewer and secure with twine.

  4. Place the fish in a baking dish and top with 2-3 thin slices of salt pork.

  5. Sprinkle salt over the fish and dust it with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Baste the fish several times with the cooking juices.

  2. Bake for 1 hour for a 4-pound fish.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

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

  4. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Slices of bread
Form the stuffing that fills the fish and soaks up flavor and moisture as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the bread stuffing and helps the cooking juices brown the surface.
Salt pork
Lays fat over the fish, adding savory flavor and moisture as it renders in the dish.
Flour
Dusted on the fish, it helps the surface brown and thickens the cooking juices.

The step that matters

Baste the fish several times with the cooking juices. Lean fish dries out easily in the oven. Spooning the hot juices over it keeps the surface moist and helps it cook evenly.

“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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