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Fricasseed Fish

A creamy milk-based sauce with peppercorns, mace, optional mushrooms and ham, served over rice or mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fricasseed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk with peppercorns, mace, mushrooms, and ham in a saucepan until flavored.

  2. Add mushroom ketchup or fried flap mushrooms if desired for browning.

  3. Thicken the sauce with corn flour, stirring until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the fish to the sauce and heat gently without boiling.

  2. Arrange boiled rice or mashed potatoes in a wall on a hot dish.

  3. Pour the fricassee into the center and serve hot.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy, delicate flavor.
Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the fish.
White fish
Provides the main protein, which stays tender when gently heated in the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory depth and a browned color to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the fish gently without boiling. Boiling a sauce thickened with starch can break it and make it grainy, and vigorous heat toughens delicate fish proteins. Gentle heat keeps both the sauce smooth and the fish tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, fish, mushroom, ham, ketchup, anchovy, corn. 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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