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Fish a LA Creme

Fish à la Crème is a creamy fish dish with milk, onions, butter, flour, wine, bread crumbs, garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Fish a LA Creme

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish until tender.

  2. Remove the bones from the fish.

  3. Mince the fish finely.

  4. Season the minced fish with salt, pepper, and lemon.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the milk with the onions until they are in shreds.

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and flour together.

  3. Sieve the boiling milk into the butter and flour mixture.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Boil again while stirring to prevent burning or lumps.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grate the lemon rind.

  2. Mix the grated lemon rind with the wine into the fish.

  3. Grate the bread.

  4. Layer the dressing, fish, and more dressing in a serving dish.

  5. Top with bread crumbs.

  6. Shape the crumbs into an oval.

  7. Place the dish on a water-filled bread pan in the oven until browned.

  8. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 bulk of the dish, providing the flaky body of the filling.
Milk
Makes the smooth, creamy dressing that keeps the fish moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to thicken the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth sauce.
Bread
Grated into crumbs to form a golden, browned topping.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the fish filling.

The step that matters

Boil again while stirring. Flour thickens the milk only as it heats, and stopping to stir lets it settle and scorch on the pan base or form lumps, so constant stirring keeps the dressing smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

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

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