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Baked White-fish

A whole white fish stuffed with bread crumbs and butter, then baked and served with parsley or egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 White-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. Fill the fish with a stuffing made from bread crumbs and butter.

  3. Sew up the fish to secure the stuffing.

  4. Sprinkle the fish with butter, salt, and pepper.

  5. Dredge the fish in flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for one hour, basting often.

  2. Serve with parsley sauce or egg sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Make up the stuffing, absorbing juices and keeping the inside moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown while baking.
Flour
Dredging coats the outside, helping it brown and form a light crust.

The step that matters

Basting often during the hour-long bake. Regular basting spoons melted fat and juices over the surface, which keeps the fish from drying out and helps the exterior brown evenly over the long cook.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

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