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Fillets of Fish and Cheese Sauce

Fish fillets baked with lemon, butter, and cheese sauce, topped with dry cheese and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fillets of Fish and Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake

  1. Fillet the fish, wash, and dry them.

  2. Place the fillets on a baking sheet and sprinkle with lemon juice.

  3. Dot with small pieces of butter, cover with buttered paper, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on thickness.

Finish and serve

  1. Carefully transfer the fillets to a serving dish.

  2. Pour the cheese sauce over the fillets, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  3. Sprinkle with dry cheese and brown under the grill or in front of the fire.

  4. 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Fish fillets (in the method)
Provide the main body of the dish, which cooks gently to a flaky texture.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the fish from drying out while it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.
Cheese sauce
Adds creamy richness and moisture over the fillets.
Dry cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Browning the cheese topping. Dry cheese sprinkled on top can burn quickly under a hot grill, turning bitter. Watch it closely so it turns golden and melted rather than dark, because browning depends on sugars and proteins reacting at high heat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, sauce, butter, pepper):

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, sauce, butter, pepper. 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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