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Fish in Bread Cases

Bread rounds filled with flaked whiting in butter, lemon, parsley, and curry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Fish in Bread Cases

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cases

  1. Cut rounds from the bread slices and make a small hollow in the center of each.

  2. Dip the bread rounds in milk, dust with flour, brush with beaten egg, and cover with breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the bread cases in boiling fat until golden brown, then drain on paper.

Make the filling

  1. Flake the cooked whiting, removing skin and bones, and heat in creamy melted butter.

  2. Add lemon juice, parsley, and curry powder to the butter, ensuring it does not boil.

Serve

  1. Fill the bread cases with the fish fricassee and serve immediately.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Slices of bread
Form the edible case that holds the fish filling.
Flour
Gives the milk-dipped bread a dry surface so the egg coating adheres.
Beaten egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating and helps it brown during frying.
Fine dry breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer coating when fried.
Creamy melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish filling.
Cooked whiting
Provides the main fish filling, which is gently warmed in the butter.

The step that matters

Warming the butter sauce without boiling. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water; if it boils hard, the emulsion can break and turn greasy and separated, and the lemon juice may curdle the sauce. Keeping it warm preserves a smooth, creamy texture.

“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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