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Escalloped Fish

A baked fish dish with a creamy sauce, parsley, onion, and bread crumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Escalloped Fish

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 ↓

Escalloped 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 remove all bones and skin.

  2. Flake the fish into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk or cream and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the parsley and onion to the mixture, then remove them once it boils.

  3. Stir in the butter and a shake of cayenne pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and layer the sauce, then the fish, followed by more sauce, and top with bread crumbs.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for half an hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock or halibut
Provides the flaky body of the dish, the main component of the layers.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a smooth sauce that holds the layers together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, improving flavour and mouthfeel.
Bread crumbs
Form the topping that browns in the oven, adding a crisp surface.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the boiling milk until smooth. Adding flour to liquid without stirring can form lumps of starch that do not dissolve. Stirring as the flour goes in disperses the starch so it thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, milk, flour, parsley, butter, pepper, bread. 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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