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Escalloped Fish with One Egg

A baked fish dish topped with a butter‑flour sauce, beaten egg, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Escalloped Fish with One Egg

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. Dip the fish in boiling water for a moment, then remove it to retain the juice.

  2. Bone and skin the fish.

Assemble the dish

  1. Rub a baking dish with garlic or layer it with chopped onion and a bit of butter.

  2. Place the fish in the dish and season with salt and pepper.

  3. In a saucepan, combine boiling water with butter and flour to make a sauce, then add lemon juice.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fish, cover with beaten egg, and sprinkle with cracker crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden and serve in the same dish.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its flesh and flavor.
Egg
Beaten egg sets during baking, binding the topping into a golden crust.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and water mixture into a smooth sauce that keeps the fish moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the sauce taste rounded and the top brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter and egg.

The step that matters

Making the sauce. Flour must be fully mixed into the hot butter and water to avoid lumps and to thicken evenly. Adding the lemon juice after thickening helps keep the sauce from thinning or curdling.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, garlic, onion, butter, pepper, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, garlic, onion, butter, pepper, flour, lemon. 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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