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Scolloped Fish

A baked dish of minced boiled fish with cream, butter, pepper, salt, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scolloped Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold boiled fish.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the fish in a dish.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter.

  3. Sprinkle a layer of bread crumbs on top.

  4. Repeat layers until the dish is filled.

  5. Pour ½ cup of cream over the top.

  6. Bake until heated through.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled fish
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the substance that the layers are built from.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the layers as it melts.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned topping layer and absorbs moisture from the dish.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, becoming a creamy sauce as the dish bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until heated through. Fish is already cooked, so the goal is only to heat it evenly and set the cream without overbaking, which can make the fish dry and the cream split or turn grainy.

“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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