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Baked Fish

A whole fish baked with a breadcrumb and butter dressing, seasoned with pepper, salt, and sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 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 the fish

  1. Wash the fish and remove the backbone.

  2. Salt the fish and lay it flat in a hot pan with hot lard or pork gravy.

Make the dressing and bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  2. Prepare the dressing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, beaten egg, and enough water to moisten.

  3. Season the dressing with pepper, salt, and sage, then spread it on the fish.

  4. Return the fish to the oven and bake for another 30 minutes.

  5. Serve with drawn butter.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 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. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

  5. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind with the egg to form a soft, spoonable dressing.
Beaten egg
Binds the dressing so it holds together on the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing and moistens it as it bakes.
Hot lard or pork gravy
Adds fat and flavour to the fish and helps it brown in the hot pan.

The step that matters

Moistening the dressing. Too little water leaves the crumbs dry and crumbly, while too much makes the dressing soggy and heavy. Adding water gradually until the crumbs just hold together gives a moist, cohesive layer that bakes without drying out.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

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