Skip to main content
Main

Cusk a LA Creme

A baked casserole of cold cooked cusk fish layered with a white cream sauce and topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan and add the mace, bay leaf, parsley, and onion.

  2. Remove the mace, bay leaf, parsley, and onion after the milk has boiled for a moment.

  3. Rub together the butter and flour in a separate bowl, then stir this mixture into the hot milk.

  4. Cook the milk mixture for 2 minutes.

  5. Add the well-beaten egg yolks to the mixture and remove from heat.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer some of the sauce, followed by a layer of fish, then more sauce.

  2. Repeat the layering until all ingredients are used, finishing with a layer of sauce on top.

  3. Sprinkle the top lightly with bread crumbs.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until hot and nicely browned.

  5. Serve in the same dish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,432 recipes

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

  3. Mace + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Fish + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together25,834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the sauce and enrich its texture as they set with gentle heat.
Flour
Flour mixed with butter thickens the milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Milk forms the body of the creamy sauce that coats and moistens the fish.
Cusk fish
Flaked cooked fish provides the main substance and flavor of the casserole.
Butter
Butter adds richness and helps form a smooth roux with the flour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot when they go in. Removing the pan from heat before adding them lets them thicken the sauce gently and evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Capersbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, milk, parsley, onion, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Fried FishIllustrationFried Fish120 recipesIllustration of Fish CroquettesIllustrationFish Croquettes81 recipesIllustration of White BreadIllustrationWhite Bread80 recipes