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French Fish

A fish dish served with a white sauce of milk, flour, butter, onions, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

French Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine flour and gradually add milk, mixing until smooth.

  2. Add onions, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  3. Place over heat and stir in butter until melted.

  4. Strain through a sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer a little sauce in the bottom of a dish, followed by a layer of fish.

  2. Season lightly with white pepper and salt.

  3. Add another layer of sauce.

  4. Repeat until all fish is used.

  5. Finish with sauce on top.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, pourable sauce as it is cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that coats and binds the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Boiled fish
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish, layered through the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the milk. Adding the milk gradually while mixing keeps the flour dispersed, which prevents lumps from forming in the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, milk, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, milk, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, 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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