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Red Herrings or Yarmouth Bloaters

Baked fish fillets coated in breadcrumbs, butter, and sea salt, finished with lemon juice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Red Herrings or Yarmouth Bloaters

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

  1. Wash and dry the fish thoroughly with a cloth.

  2. Arrange the fish in a flat baking dish.

Bake

  1. Cover the fish with fine bread crumbs and dot with small pieces of butter.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add a squeeze of lemon juice and garnish with fried parsley and lemon slices.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Red herrings
The fish is the main component, cooked whole and flaked tender in the oven.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crust over the fish that protects it from drying and promotes gentle browning.
Butter
Melts over the crumbs and fish, adding moisture and richness while encouraging browning.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity at the end that brightens the rich, oily flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes. Fish cooks quickly, and overbaking dries out its flesh and toughens the protein. Checking for flaking at the end of the time keeps it moist.

“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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