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Fish Baked in Milk

A fish fillet baked in milk with butter, flour, and seasonings, finished with parsley and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fish Baked in Milk

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and poach

  1. Clean and wipe the fish.

  2. Place the fish in a deep dish with the milk.

  3. Cover and bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour smoothly with a little cold milk.

  2. Pour the hot milk onto the flour mixture.

  3. Remove the fish and let the sauce boil.

  4. Add the parsley, butter, and seasonings to the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the fish with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Pour melted butter over the fish.

  3. Cover with greased paper and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 15 minutes.

  4. Transfer the fish to a hot dish.

  5. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the fish.

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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

Haddock or cod
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming flaky and tender as it cooks gently in milk.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the surface brown lightly.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks and swells with heat.
Milk
Poaches the fish gently and forms the base of the creamy sauce.
Breadcrumbs
Adds a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Mix the flour smoothly with cold milk before adding the hot milk. Starch granules clump when they meet hot liquid directly. Blending flour with cold milk first separates the particles so the sauce thickens evenly without lumps.

“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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