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Fish, Fricassee of

A white fish fricassee simmered in milk and water with spices, finished with butter, flour, and lemon juice.

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

Fish, Fricassee of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fish into pieces about 1½ inches square.

  2. Combine the milk, water, salt, pepper, bay leaf, mace, and nutmeg in a stewpan.

  3. Heat the mixture until warm.

Cook the fish

  1. Add the fish to the stewpan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the bay leaf and mace.

Thicken and serve

  1. Knead the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the mixture in small portions to the stewpan.

  3. Stir gently.

  4. Add lemon juice.

  5. Add seasoning to taste.

  6. Serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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 and becomes tender as it poaches gently in the liquid.
Butter and flour
Kneaded together and stirred in, they thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth, velvety sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, adding richness and a mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, so it is kneaded into butter first and added in small portions while stirring gently. This lets starch granules disperse and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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