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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with onions, lemon, pork slices, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Baked Fish

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Season the fish inside and out with salt and pepper.

  3. Place the fish on a large dish with sliced onions and sprinkle with lemon juice.

  4. Cover and let it sit for 1 hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Lay the fish in a baking pan with 4 slices of pork underneath and 3 slices on top.

  2. Pour melted butter over the fish and bake for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve hot, garnished with lemon quarters and 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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, cooking through in the oven to become flaky and tender.
Pork
Lays over and under the fish, adding fat and savory flavor that bastes the flesh as it bakes.
Butter
Coats the fish with fat, promoting moisture retention and gentle browning on the surface.
Onions
Sit beneath the fish during marinating, adding aroma and sweetness as they soften and release flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish and helps season it during the resting period.

The step that matters

Letting the fish sit for 1 hour. Salt and acid draw flavor into the flesh during resting, so the fish should stay covered and cold rather than being rushed to the oven. Skipping this seasoning time leaves the flesh blander.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, lemon, pork, butter, parsley. 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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