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Cream Fish

A fish dish simmered in cream with butter, flour, lemon, and seasoned, then baked with cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Cream Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the skinned and boned fish until cooked, then flake it into fine pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, heat the cream.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the butter mixture to the boiling cream and beat until well combined.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the cream sauce with the flaked fish, lemon rind, and half the lemon juice.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and cover with cracker crumbs.

  3. Drizzle with melted butter and bake until 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

White fish or red snapper
Forms the flaked body of the dish once cooked and broken into pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the sauce and topping.
Cream
Provides the liquid base that becomes a smooth, thick sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stable, spoonable sauce.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as the dish bakes.

The step that matters

Adding the butter mixture to the cream. Flour must be cooked into the butter and whisked into hot liquid so it thickens smoothly; adding it carelessly or without beating can leave lumps and an uneven sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, cream, flour, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, cream, flour, 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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