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Chinese Fish

A fish baked in a butter, flour, and milk sauce, topped with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Chinese Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Cover the fish with boiling water.

  2. Add spices and seasoning, then boil for 15 minutes or until tender.

  3. Flake the fish and place it in a buttered tin.

Make the sauce and topping

  1. Prepare the sauce by rubbing together butter, flour, and salt.

  2. Slowly add milk while stirring constantly until smooth and thick.

  3. Mash the potatoes and season them.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the sauce over the fish.

  2. Top with mashed potatoes.

  3. Bake until brown.

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. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut or other fish
Forms the flaked base of the dish, providing the main protein and substance.
Milk
Forms the smooth, thickened sauce that moistens the fish when combined with the roux.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor, and combines with flour to form a roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Potatoes
Form a mashed topping that browns in the oven and adds body.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff and folded in, they add lightness and help the topping rise and set.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff egg whites trap air, and folding gently preserves that air so the topping stays light instead of deflating into a dense layer.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, celery, milk, butter, flour, potato, egg. 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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