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Dressed Fish

A fish dish cooked in cream, mustard, anchovy essence, ketchup, and pepper, finished with butter, flour, and browned breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dressed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the fish from the bones in small pieces.

  2. Mix the fish with cream, essence of anchovies, ketchup, pepper, and salt.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Rub flour into butter, then heat in a stewpan until hot.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a serving dish.

  3. Sprinkle with bread-crumbs and brown under a salamander.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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, flaked into pieces that hold the creamy mixture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the fish a soft, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and with flour forms the base that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture so it becomes a coating rather than a liquid.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth that enhances the flavour of the fish.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cream and butter.

The step that matters

Heating the butter and flour. Rubbing flour into butter and heating it lets the flour cook and thicken evenly. If it is not cooked enough, the sauce can taste raw and stay thin or lumpy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, cream, ketchup, pepper, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, cream, ketchup, pepper, butter, flour, bread. 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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