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Dressed Fish

A creamy oyster and fish sauce seasoned with thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and cayenne, served over oyster cutlets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Dressed Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the white stock and fish stock, stirring continuously.

Simmer the sauce

  1. Add the oysters, onion, thyme, parsley, and bay leaf.

  2. Cook for about 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  2. Strain through a fine cloth and serve with oyster cutlets.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Fish stock
Adds savoury depth and most of the liquid to the sauce.
Oysters
Gives the sauce its main briny, seafood flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Add the stock gradually while stirring. Flour must be dispersed evenly in the butter and liquid before it thickens. Adding the stock slowly and stirring constantly prevents lumps, so the sauce ends up smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, pepper, butter, flour, fish, oyster. 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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