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Fricassee of Fish

A creamy sauce of simmered water, milk, mace, nutmeg, herbs, and butter, finished with lemon juice and flaked fish, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricassee of Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, milk, mace, nutmeg, and herbs. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid.

  3. In a new saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour until smooth.

  4. Add the strained liquid to the flour mixture and stir until it boils.

  5. Cook for a few minutes, then add lemon juice and fish flakes. Heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice, garnished with cut lemon and parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps form the flour-thickened base with added richness.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter and stock.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the sauce, adding body and mild sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of milk and butter.
White fish
Provides the main protein, which is already cooked and only needs to be heated through.

The step that matters

Adding the strained liquid to the flour mixture. Pouring the liquid in gradually while whisking keeps the flour from clumping. Stirring until it boils lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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