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Deviled Fish

A baked fish dish with a creamy sauce, egg yolks, parsley, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Deviled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Mince the fish coarsely.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour and gradually add the milk to make a thick sauce.

  3. Add the minced fish, finely mashed egg yolks, parsley, and season with salt, paprika, and lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a baking dish or scallop shells and fill with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the top and brown in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth, thick sauce that holds the fish together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and helps keep the mixture moist.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the thick sauce that binds the fish and egg yolks.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and body, helping the mixture set and stay creamy.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned topping when baked.

The step that matters

Make the sauce thick before adding the fish. Flour must cook into the melted butter and milk until the sauce thickens, because raw flour leaves a pasty taste and a sauce that is too thin will not bind the fish.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, butter, milk, egg, lemon, bread. 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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