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Baked Fish

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked 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. 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. Cover and set aside 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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
Provides the main body of the dish, cooking through in the oven to become flaky.
Pork
Slices laid under and over the fish add fat that bastes the flesh and keeps it moist.
Onions
Sliced onions rest under the fish and add mild sweetness and aroma as they soften.
Lemon juice
Acidity brightens the fish and helps firm its surface during the hour of resting.
Butter
Melted butter poured over the fish adds richness and moisture and promotes gentle browning.

The step that matters

Bake for the full 45 minutes at 350°F. Fish is done when its flesh turns opaque and flakes easily; underbaking leaves it raw near the bone, while overbaking dries it out. Checking for flakiness near the end helps the cook hit the right point.

Swap the onion

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

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

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