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Creamed Fish

A creamy fish dish made with butter, milk, egg yolk, and fish pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Creamed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add onion juice, minced parsley, and flour; cook for a moment.

  3. When it boils, add milk, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  4. Whip the egg yolk and mix it with hot cream.

  5. Stir the egg mixture into the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cold cooked fish and mix well.

  2. Serve in small dishes topped with browned crumbs.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce when cooked briefly with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a richer, softer texture.
Cold cooked fish
Forms the main body of the dish, set in the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the saucepan. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets very hot liquid too quickly. Mixing it with hot cream first and stirring it in gently helps keep the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, flour, milk, pepper, lemon, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, flour, milk, pepper, lemon, egg. 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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