Skip to main content
Main

Baked FisH

A baked fish dish with a thick milk and egg sauce, seasoned with nutmeg, salt, pepper, and topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Baked FisH

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a sauce by boiling parsley, milk, butter, egg yolks, nutmeg, salt, and pepper until thick.

  2. Combine the sauce with cold boiled fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a greased baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it simmers.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set with heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, giving it a smooth texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce until thick. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle if they overheat or boil hard. Keep the sauce at a gentle simmer and stir so it turns thick and smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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

More baked fish recipes

with Tomatoes 7with Breadcrumbs 6Stuffed 6in Batter 4with Pork Slices 4Sauce for 4 See all 221 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes