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Desiccated Fish on Toast

A toast topped with a sauce of desiccated fish, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Desiccated Fish on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish and egg

  1. Soak the desiccated fish in boiling water for 1 minute.

  2. Strain the fish and mix it with the chopped hard boiled egg.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.

  3. Add the fish and egg mixture, cayenne or mustard, and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot over small pieces of toast.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Desiccated fish
Provides the main savoury fish flavour that carries the whole dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and cooks with the flour to start the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce that holds the fish and egg.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and body as it thickens.
Hard boiled egg
Adds body and a soft, rich texture to the fish mixture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk while stirring constantly. Adding milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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