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Fish Toast

A toast topped with a creamy fish mixture made from milk, flour, eggs, and shredded cooked fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat 1½ cups of milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with ½ cup of milk.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes.

Add the fish

  1. Add the fish, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg yolks well.

  4. Add the remaining cold milk.

  5. Stir into the fish mixture.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Add lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Spread the mixture over the buttered toast.

  2. 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.

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

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

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, giving it substance and flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that coats and binds the fish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enriches the sauce, adding richness and body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the toast beneath the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps quickly. Mixing it first with cold milk lets the starch disperse evenly, so the boiling milk thickens into a smooth sauce rather than a lumpy one.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, milk, flour, lemon, fish. 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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