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Fricassee of Fish

A fish fricassee made with white fish, mace, parsley, butter, flour, fish stock, milk, lemon juice, and seasonings, served over boiled rice.

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

Fricassee of Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fish

  1. Cook the fish in water with mace and parsley until done.

  2. Remove skin and bones, then break the fish into flakes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, make a sauce with butter, flour, and ⅓ cup of the cooking water.

  2. Season the sauce with lemon juice, nutmeg, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the milk and fish flakes to the sauce.

  4. Serve with a border of boiled rice.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Provides the main body and flaky texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and forms the base of the sauce with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the butter and liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and moisture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Making the sauce. Flour must be cooked briefly in the butter and the liquid added gradually while stirring. This keeps the sauce smooth and lump-free and lets the starch thicken properly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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