Skip to main content
Baking

Fish a LA Creme

A baked fish dish with cream sauce and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fish a LA Creme

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

Fish a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish in salted water until cooked.

  2. Remove the skin, bones, and shred the fish finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream, flour, butter, onion, parsley, and cayenne pepper until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. In a deep dish, layer the fish and sauce until filled.

  2. Top with bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Whitefish + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the rich body of the sauce and keeps the fish moist during baking.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce that clings to the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the sauce feel smooth.
Halibut, whitefish, rock or shad
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender once cooked and shredded.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream sauce with flour. Flour must be fully mixed into the cream and butter so it thickens evenly; lumps or undissolved starch leave the sauce grainy and uneven in the baked dish.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whitefish, cream, flour, butter, parsley, pepper, bread):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, cream, flour, butter, parsley, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes