Skip to main content
Main

Fish Baked in Milk

Fish baked in milk with seasoning, flour thickening, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Baked in Milk

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Wash the fish in salted water and truss it.

  2. Place the fish in a baking dish with a little margarine or butter on top, and pour the milk around it.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the fish is cooked, basting frequently with the milk.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the fish to a hot dish.

  2. Thicken the milk with blended flour, add salt and pepper, and stir in the chopped parsley if desired.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fish before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter 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

Milk
Forms the cooking liquid and, once thickened, the sauce that coats the fish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats and its starch swells.
Whiting
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the milk so it stays moist.
Margarine or butter
Adds fat and richness to the fish and the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with blended flour. Flour must be blended smoothly into cold liquid before heating, otherwise it forms lumps. Starch thickens the sauce only as it heats, so it needs to be stirred while it comes up to a simmer.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, milk, flour, butter):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, milk, flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes