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Fillets of Flounder Stuffed with Forcemeat

Fillets of flounder stuffed with a forcemeat mixture of fish, egg white, salt, paprika, and cream, baked with water and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fillets of Flounder Stuffed with Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped fish, egg white, salt, and paprika.

  2. Beat in the thick cream until well mixed.

  3. Stuff the flounder fillets with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Prepare a baking dish and place the stuffed fillets inside the dish.

  2. Add boiling water to the dish.

  3. Reduce the temperature.

  4. Baste the fillets every ten minutes.

  5. After each basting, dredge the fillets with flour.

  6. Finish the fillets with butter.

  7. Cook until the central bone separates easily from the fish.

Serve

  1. Once baked, remove the skin and bone.

  2. Serve with mayonnaise dressing topped with capers, pickles, 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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Firm raw fish
Forms the body of the forcemeat, giving the stuffing its main structure and bulk.
Egg white
Helps bind the forcemeat and sets when baked, holding the stuffing together.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the forcemeat light and tender once beaten in.
Flour
Dredged onto the fillets during baking to help form a light coating that browns.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the fillets and helps them brown during baking.

The step that matters

Stuffing and baking the fillets with the cream beaten stiff. Cream beaten to stiff peaks traps air and must be folded in gently so the forcemeat stays light. Overmixing deflates it and makes the stuffing dense.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, cream, capers, parsley, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, cream, capers, parsley, flour, 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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