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Scalloped Fish

Scalloped Fish is a baked dish of fish pieces with bread crumbs, butter, seasoned with white pepper, sea salt, nutmeg, and optional mushrooms or anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Scalloped Fish

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Break the dressed fish into small pieces.

  2. Place the fish in tin scallops.

Season and bake

  1. Add bread crumbs, butter, and cream if desired.

  2. Season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes or brown before the fire.

  4. Optionally, mix in mushrooms or an anchovy for added flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dressed fish
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it its flaky, substantial texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add a light, crisp texture to the topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling from drying out.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, cream, nutmeg, mushroom, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, cream, nutmeg, mushroom, anchovy. 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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