Skip to main content
Main

Baked Sea Bass

A whole sea bass stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, herbs, and salt pork, baked in soup stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Baked Sea Bass

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 the stuffing

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, lemon zest, parsley, thyme, marjoram, salt, and pepper.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs with water and add to the stuffing to moisten it.

Stuff and prepare the fish

  1. Stuff the sea bass with the mixture and sew it up.

  2. Score the fish on both sides down to the bone and insert thin slices of salt pork into each incision.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a long pan with soup stock, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the size of the fish.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the egg and butter to form a moist, binding stuffing inside the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing moist during baking.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape around the fish.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the flesh, adding moisture and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Bake for the right time for the fish's size. Baking time depends on the fish's size. Too little time leaves the flesh undercooked near the bone, while too much dries out the delicate fish, so check it as it nears the lower end of the range.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes