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Fish a LA Ckeme

Fish boiled, bones removed, served in a cream sauce with lemon, onion, parsley, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish a LA Ckeme

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Take any firm salt water fish, rub it with salt and put it in a kettle with enough boiling water to cover it.

  2. As soon as it boils, set it back where it will simmer, let it stand for an hour, then take it up and draw out all the bones.

Make the sauce

  1. Put one ounce of flour into a sauce-pan, to which add by degrees one quart of cream or new milk, mixing it very smoothly.

  2. Add the juice of one lemon, one onion chopped fine, a bunch of parsley, a little nutmeg, salt and pepper.

  3. Put this on the fire, stirring it till it forms a thick sauce.

  4. Stir in a quarter of a pound of butter.

  5. Strain the sauce through a sieve.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

683Calories
16 gProtein
19 gFat
112 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth, thick sauce as it heats.
Cream
Provides the rich liquid base and fat that give the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce as it heats. Flour mixed into cream can lump if it is not blended smoothly first and stirred while heating. Constant stirring lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sauce, cream, parsley, butter, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sauce, cream, parsley, butter, lemon, nutmeg. 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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