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Fish Creamed, for Coquille or Ramekin

A creamy fish sauce made with butter, onion, parsley, flour, milk or stock, egg yolk, and hot cream, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Creamed, for Coquille or Ramekin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil fish in Court Bouillon until cooked, then cool and cut into small pieces, discarding bones and skin.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, add onion juice, parsley, and flour, and cook until bubbling.

  2. Gradually stir in milk or fish stock, salt, and cayenne, and bring to a boil.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix egg yolk with hot cream.

  4. Once the sauce is boiling, add the egg mixture and blend thoroughly.

  5. Fold in the fish pieces, then fill coquille or ramekin dishes.

Finish and serve

  1. Cover with browned crumbs and serve very hot, or fill pates or vol au vents without crumbs.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the sauce filling.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, adding richness and smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux, giving it body.
Milk or fish stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which the flour thickens as it heats.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding richness and smoothness.
Hot cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets very hot liquid directly. Stirring the sauce off the boil or tempering the yolk with hot cream first helps it thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, parsley, flour, milk, white wine, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, parsley, flour, milk, white wine, egg. 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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