Skip to main content
Main

Cream Pickerel

Cream Pickerel is a baked fish dish finished with a butter, milk, and corn‑starch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Pickerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and bake the fish

  1. Clean the fish and score the backbone in several places if large.

  2. Bake the fish slowly, pouring 1 cup of boiling water over it at first.

  3. Baste the fish often with butter and water while baking.

  4. Once done, place the fish on a hot-water dish.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In the dripping pan, add 1 cup of milk with a pinch of baking soda and heat.

  2. Stir in 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 teaspoon of corn-starch mixed with water.

  3. Add chopped parsley and boil once to thicken.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste, then pour over the fish.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  5. Corn + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the body of the cream sauce and supplies its smooth, rich texture.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch gelatinizes with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and helps keep the fish moist while baking.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the milk slightly, which helps it stay smooth when heated.

The step that matters

Stir the corn-starch into the milk and boil it once. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in liquid before heating, or it clumps. It thickens only once it reaches a boil, so the sauce needs to come to a full boil to reach its final texture.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, milk, corn, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, milk, corn, 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.

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipes