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Salt Whitefish with Cream Sauce

A dish of salted whitefish simmered in a cream and milk sauce with butter and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Salt Whitefish with Cream Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt whitefish overnight in cold water.

  2. Drain the fish and place it in a skillet.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the cream and milk over the fish.

  2. Add the butter and pepper.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Let it thicken 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Whitefish + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt whitefish
Provides the main protein and savory flavor once soaked to remove excess salt.
Cream
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce coat the fish.
Milk
Thins the cream and adds moisture to form a looser sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rounded flavor and silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Let it thicken before serving. Boiling reduces the liquid and concentrates the dairy, while the sauce thickens as it cools slightly. Serving too early leaves a thin sauce that does not cling to the fish.

“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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