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Fish Baked in Milk

Fish baked in milk with butter, salt, pepper, and a flour sauce, garnished with hard‑boiled egg slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Fish Baked in Milk

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Wash and skin the fish, then place it in a baking dish.

  2. Pour the milk over the fish.

  3. Add the butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes, basting with the milk.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the fish to a hot dish.

  2. Pour the milk into a saucepan.

  3. Moisten the flour with cold milk.

  4. Stir the flour mixture into the hot milk until it boils.

  5. Add salt, pepper, and the butter to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  2. Garnish with slices of hard boiled eggs.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cod or halibut
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the milk to stay moist.
Milk
Bastes the fish during baking and, thickened with flour, becomes the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when stirred in and brought to a boil.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to both the fish and the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the hot milk. Flour must be moistened with cold milk first so it disperses without lumps. Stirring while the milk heats and boiling it lets starch granules swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

“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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