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Scalloped Fish

Scalloped Fish is a baked fish dish with milk, anchovy sauce, mustard, walnut ketchup, pepper, salt, bread crumbs, and butter.

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

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Scalloped Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove all bones from the cold fish and place it in a stew pan.

  2. Add milk or cream, anchovy sauce, prepared mustard, walnut ketchup, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Heat the mixture until nearly hot, stirring occasionally.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a deep dish and top with bread crumbs.

  2. Dot with small pieces of butter and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Forms the main body of the dish, giving the scalloped bake its substance.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness so the fish stays tender rather than drying out in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the crumb topping brown and adds richness.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Baking at 400°F drives browning on the crumb topping while the milk-based mixture heats through. Pulling the dish too early leaves the top pale and the filling underheated, while baking too long can dry the fish and mixture.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, milk, anchovy, sauce, mustard, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Peasfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, anchovy, sauce, mustard, ketchup, 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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