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Steamed Fish

A fish dish steamed with cream, butter, flour, milk, mushrooms, truffles, parsley, cayenne pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Steamed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cream the butter and flour together.

  2. Boil the cream and milk with sliced truffles and mushrooms.

  3. Add the butter and flour mixture to the boiling cream and milk.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the raw fish cut into small pieces.

  2. Place the mixture in a mold and steam or boil for 45 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.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, flaky texture in the steam.
Butter and flour
Creamed together and stirred into the liquid, they thicken the sauce.
Cream and milk
Form the liquid base of the sauce, adding richness and moisture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the sauce as they cook in the cream.
Truffles
Add a concentrated, aromatic flavor to the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture to the boiling cream and milk. Flour needs to be dispersed and heated in the liquid so it can thicken the sauce smoothly. Adding it to a boiling liquid while stirring helps prevent lumps, since flour clumps when it meets hot liquid unevenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, cream, butter, milk, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, cream, butter, milk, mushroom, 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.

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