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Devilled Fish

A baked fish mixture with milk, breadcrumbs, parsley, egg yolks, spices, and flaked fish, topped with buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the filling

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the grated bread crumbs and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Remove from heat and add parsley, egg yolks, cayenne, paprika, salt, and onion juice. Mix well and fold in the flaked fish.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill shells or individual dishes with the mixture.

  2. Top with buttered bread crumbs and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Softens the bread crumbs into a moist, creamy base for the filling.
Grated bread crumbs
Thicken the milk and give the filling body and structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set firm when heated.
Flaked cooked fish
Forms the main body of the filling and adds savory flavor.
Onion juice
Adds a sharp, aromatic onion flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Browning the buttered bread crumb topping. The filling is already cooked, so the oven mainly browns the topping. Watch it closely, since the buttered crumbs can scorch before the filling heats through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, parsley, egg, pepper, fish. 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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