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Deviled Fish

A creamy sauce of hot cream, butter, corn starch, and seasonings mixed with cooked fish, baked in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Deviled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Scald the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter in a quart saucepan until bubbling.

  3. Add the corn starch and stir until well mixed.

  4. Add one-third of the cream and stir as it boils and thickens.

  5. Add more cream and boil again until smooth.

  6. Mix in the remaining cream until the sauce is very thick.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the seasonings and mix while hot with the cooked fish.

  2. Spoon the mixture into shells and bake until heated through.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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. Corn + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the cream into a smooth, very thick sauce as it boils.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux that thickens the sauce.
Hot cream
Makes up the liquid body of the sauce that thickens with the starch.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce while adding the cream in stages. Starch must boil to swell and thicken fully. Adding cream in portions and boiling each time keeps the sauce smooth and prevents lumps, so it becomes thick enough to hold the fish.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, corn, celery, pepper, fish. 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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