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Pish Scallop

A baked fish dish with cream, anchovy sauce, mustard, walnut ketchup, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pish Scallop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Pick the fish from the bones and place it in a stewpan.

  2. Add cream, anchovy sauce, mustard, walnut ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  3. Heat gently, stirring occasionally, until nearly hot but do not boil.

Bake and brown

  1. Transfer the mixture to a deep dish or scallop shell.

  2. Top with a generous amount of bread crumbs and small pieces of butter.

  3. Brown under a Dutch oven or salamander 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Cold fish
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the substance that the sauce coats.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the mixture a soft, smooth texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden topping when browned under heat.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the crumb topping brown and taste rich.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Cream can curdle or separate when it boils, and the fish becomes tough and dry if overheated. Heating only until nearly hot keeps the sauce smooth and the fish tender.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, cream, anchovy, sauce, mustard, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Sesamefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, cream, anchovy, sauce, mustard, ketchup, pepper. 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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