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Fish in Bread Cases

A fried bread shell filled with a buttery lemon parsley fish fricassee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Fish in Bread Cases

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread cases

  1. Cut rounds from the bread slices and hollow out the centers.

  2. Dip the bread rounds in milk.

  3. Dust the bread rounds with flour.

  4. Brush the bread rounds with beaten egg.

  5. Cover the bread rounds with breadcrumbs.

  6. Fry the bread cases in boiling fat until golden brown.

  7. Drain the fried bread cases on paper.

Make the fish filling

  1. Flake the cooked whiting, removing skin and bones.

  2. Heat the flaked fish in creamy melted butter with lemon juice, parsley, and curry powder.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the fried bread cases with the fish fricassee.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Bread
Forms the crisp shell that holds the fish filling.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres and browns evenly when fried.
Whiting
Provides the flaked fish that makes up the main filling.
Butter
Enriches the filling with fat, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crunchy, golden outer coating on the bread cases when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the bread cases in boiling fat until golden brown. The coated bread must fry long enough to become crisp and golden, which sets its shell, but not so long that it darkens or burns. Draining on paper removes surface oil so the cases stay crisp.

“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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