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Fricassee of Fish

A creamy milk-based fish dish with butter, flour, and spices, served with sliced hard‑boiled eggs and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the fish and milk

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, onion, mace, cayenne, and lemon peel; bring to a boil.

  2. Skin and bone the fish, then cut it into 1.5‑inch pieces.

  3. Once the milk boils, carefully add the fish and simmer for 10‑15 minutes until cooked.

  4. Remove the fish and keep it warm in a covered bowl over a pot of boiling water.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter, then add the flour and cook without browning.

  2. Strain the milk into the butter and flour mixture, stirring well.

  3. Boil the sauce for 2‑3 minutes, then add salt to taste.

  4. Remove the sauce from heat, add lemon juice, and pour it over the fish.

Plate and garnish

  1. Arrange the fish in the center of a hot serving dish.

  2. Slice the hard‑boiled eggs into eight pieces lengthwise and place two on top of the fish, with parsley in between.

  3. Use the remaining egg pieces to form a border around the dish, placing parsley between each piece.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the seasoned milk.
Butter
Melted with flour to form the base of the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Poaches the fish and becomes the liquid that is thickened into the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide a garnish and a rich, firm contrast to the delicate fish.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for 2‑3 minutes after straining the milk. Flour only thickens fully when it is heated in the liquid long enough for its starch to swell; a short boil leaves the sauce thin and tasting of raw flour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, 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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