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Baked Cream Fish

A baked dish of flaked white fish layered with a thick milk-based cream sauce flavoured with parsley, green pepper and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Cream Fish

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, then allow to cool and break into small flakes.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, then gradually stir in the milk and cook until thick.

  2. Add the parsley, green pepper, onion juice, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to the sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a baking dish, layer the fish and sauce alternately until all ingredients are used.

  2. Sprinkle the top with buttered 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.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, providing flaky protein that sets in the baked sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps build the smooth base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that holds the layers together.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as the flour starches gelatinize with heat.
Green pepper
Adds a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor and some texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until thick. Flour must be cooked with the butter and milk until the starch swells and thickens. If the sauce is underdone, it stays thin and runs out of the layers during baking, and the flour taste remains.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, milk, parsley, pepper, 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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