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Baked Fish

A whole fish stuffed with filling, wrapped in salt pork, baked until brown and served with drawn butter or egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Baked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, wipe, and dry the fish.

  2. Stuff the fish with the stuffing and sew the edges together.

  3. Cut gashes 2 inches apart on each side of the fish.

  4. Insert narrow strips of fat salt pork into the gashes and place some in the pan under the fish.

  5. Prop the fish upright in the pan using pie weights or skewers.

  6. Dredge the fish with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) without water.

  2. Baste with pork fat when the flour is brown, and baste often.

  3. Once done, carefully transfer to a hot platter, remove the strings or skewers, and serve with drawn butter 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. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through in the hot oven while its flesh firms and turns opaque.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the fish, keeping it moist and flavoring the flesh as it renders.
Flour
Dredged on the fish, it helps the surface brown and form a crisp, golden crust.
Stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding bulk and flavor while absorbing juices from the fish.

The step that matters

Basting with pork fat once the flour browns. Basting adds fat to the surface, keeping the fish moist while the flour browns into a crust. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat, so basting often helps prevent this.

“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.

More baked fish recipes

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