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Fricasseed Fish

A fish dish simmered in a milk-based sauce with peppercorns, mace, and optional mushrooms or ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Fricasseed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk with peppercorns, mace, and optional mushrooms or ham in a saucepan.

  2. Add mushroom ketchup or lightly fried flap mushrooms if you want a brown sauce.

  3. Add anchovy or tomato sauce for color if desired.

  4. Thicken the sauce with corn flour once it is flavored.

Finish

  1. Add the cooked fish to the sauce and heat through.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Mushroom + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Mushroom + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the corn flour thickens.
Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the fish.
Cooked white fish
Forms the main body of the dish, gently warmed through in the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory depth and a brown color to the sauce when used.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with corn flour once it is flavored. Corn flour needs to be cooked in the hot liquid to swell and thicken; adding it too early or undercooking it can leave the sauce thin or tasting raw. Flavor is best built first, then thickened.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, mushroom, ham, ketchup, corn, flour, fish):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, mushroom, ham, ketchup, corn, flour, 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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