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Whitings Dressed with White Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Whitings Dressed with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash and clean the whitings well, then soak them in bait and water for a few hours.

  2. In a pot, combine white soup, minced parsley, white pepper, coarse sea salt, and grated nutmeg; bring to a boil.

  3. Add the fish to the boiling sauce and cook briefly.

  4. In another pan, heat cream with butter rolled in flour until thickened.

  5. Beat the egg yolk and mix it into the sauce without boiling to prevent curdling.

  6. Pour the sauce over the fish and garnish with lemon.

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

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Whiting + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, parsley, nutmeg, cream, butter, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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