Why it works: Fish and oyster match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 488 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Fish a la Creme.
2 pounds of cusk, halibut, cod or white fish, boiled and shredded with a fork; put in a dish with bits of butter, pepper and salt to taste. Boil 1 pint of milk, ¼ pound butter, and 2 tablespoonsful flour to thicken, a small onion when thick, take out onion, and spread the mixture on the layers of fish. Cover top with fine bread crumbs, squeeze out the juice of 1 lemon, and brown in oven.
Fish Stuffed with Crackers.
6 crackers, 1 quart milk, 4 eggs, ¼ teaspoonful pepper, ⅛ teaspoonful nutmeg, ½ teaspoonful sugar, 1 large fish boned and skinned, about 3 tablespoonsful butter, soak crackers in milk until soft, add eggs slightly beaten, ½ teaspoonful of salt, pepper, nutmeg and sugar, and stir. Put 1 tablespoonful of the butter onto a tin sheet placed in a dripping pan, place ½ of the fish on the sheet and cover with the crackers and custard, add remaining half of fish, pour over all the remaining crackers and custard and daub with second tablespoonful of butter, and bake about forty minutes, as the custard coagulates baste the fish with it and so continue until all the custard and cracker is on the fish. When a golden brown baste with a third spoonful of butter. Serve with Hollandaise Sauce.
M. W. McFarland.
Fried Fish.
Take salmon steaks, wash well, beat yolk and dip fish into it, sprinkle with pepper and salt, have a deep iron pan with basket, have pan half full of boiling lard, put fish in basket, put in lard till nicely brown all over.
SAUCE.—Have green parsley picked very fine, put in pan ½ tablespoonful of butter, brown well, half tablespoonful of vinegar, add parsley, serve with fish.
Mrs. John Gregg.
Simple Sauce for Fish.
½ cup of butter, yolks of 2 eggs, ¼ of a lemon, rub the butter to a cream, add the beaten yolks, a saltspoonful of salt, pepper to taste, and just before serving a half cup of boiling water.
Mrs. C. E. Schramm.
Salmon Loaf.
1 quart can of Salmon, ½ cup rolled cracker, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 3 well beaten eggs, salt and pepper to taste, steam one hour, serve with rich drawn butter gravy, with a can of mushrooms cooked in gravy.
Frances H. Potter.
Fish Turbot.
Boil white fish, picked fine (red snapper or other fish will do). For gravy take 1 quart of milk for 3 pounds of fish, add a little onion, 3 bay leaves and a pinch of thyme. Let simmer for an hour, then strain, thicken with 2 or 3 teaspoonsful of flour and add 1 cup of melted butter. Season with pepper and salt. Put in alternate layers of fish and gravy, sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake. Serve with sauce tartare.
Mrs. C. E. Schramm.
Clean white fish weighing 1½ pounds, place in pan, cover with water and cook in oven till two-thirds done. Flake the fish from the bones.
DRESSING.—1 pint milk, 1 egg, small spoonful butter, small spoonful flour, a pinch of white pepper. Steam in double boiler, butter some shells and put layers of fish and dressing till full and cracker crumbs on top. Bake 15 or 20 minutes. Can be baked in dish same as oysters.
Katherine Stevens.
Take a white fish, steam till done, take out the bones and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
SAUCE.—Take 1 quart of milk, ¼ pound of flour, 1 bunch of parsley and summer savory, 3 slices of onion, put this over the fire and stir until it creams. Adding 2 eggs, ½ pound butter, then put through a sieve. Put into a baking-dish, first a layer of fish and then one of sauce, and so on, up to the top, spread with crumbs and bake half an hour.
E. G. Roads.
Cream of Oysters.
2 pints of oysters, 1 pint milk, 1 pint cream, 3 tablespoonsful corn starch, butter and salt to taste, serve on toast. Let cream come to a boil, mix corn starch with cold milk, and stir into boiling milk, cook oysters in their own liquor and turn into the cream, season well with salt, pepper and butter.
Mrs. C. P. Squires.
Escalloped Oysters.
1 can oysters, 1 pint sifted bread crumbs, 6 tablespoonsful melted butter, salt and pepper. Pour oysters into sieve with 1 cup cold water and let them drain, pick off all pieces of shell. Roll and sift dry bread for crumbs. Into greased baking dish put layer of oysters, cover with ⅓ of the bread crumbs, season with salt and pepper, and pour over ⅓ of the melted butter. In this way make three layers of oysters. Bake in pretty hot oven from 20 to 30 minutes.
Croustades or Bread Boxes.
Cut a loaf of stale bread from which the crust has been removed into pieces, 2½ inches thick, 2½ inches wide, and 3½ inches long, then with a sharp pointed knife cut a line around the inside ½ inch from the edge and carefully remove the crumbs, leaving a box with sides and bottom ½ inch in thickness. The boxes may be cut round if preferred, using two sizes of biscuit cutters. They are fried in a kettle of smoking hot lard, and should be crisp and dry and the color of amber. Serve heaping full of creamed spinach, creamed fish, chicken or asparagus tips.
Mrs. W. D. Eaton.
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KAUT & KRIECHBAUM. HEADQUARTERS FOR Grand Ideal Steel Ranges, And Radiant House Base Burners.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Fish + oystertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together81,222 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Salmon + oystertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together671 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Salmon + fishtop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together1,058 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Pepper + nutmegtop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together13,015 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, pepper, sugar, vinegar, salmon, fish):
- Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
- Gingerbetter flavor fit
- Dillabout as good a flavor fit
- Nutmegthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, sugar, vinegar, salmon, fish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
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