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White Fish in Butter with Cream Sauce

A dish of flaked white fish mixed into a butter‑cream sauce, formed into balls and served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

White Fish in Butter with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Break the fish into flakes and chop finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the onion until golden.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until yellow.

  3. Add the milk and stir until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan clean.

  4. Stir in the seasonings and yolk, then allow to set.

  5. Add the minced fish and stir until a thick paste forms.

Shape and serve

  1. Turn the mixture out onto a plate and let it cool.

  2. Form the paste into balls and arrange them in a pyramid on a dish.

  3. Pour enough cream sauce over the balls to completely cover them, and serve hot or cold.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Cold cooked fish
Forms the bulk of the balls and supplies the main flavour and body.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and provides fat for a smooth, rich base.
Flour
Thickens the milk with the butter into a stable sauce that holds the paste together.
Milk
Liquid that gelatinises with the flour to form the creamy sauce and moisture.
Egg yolk
Enriches the mixture and helps it set firmly when cooled.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the flour and butter. Starch in the flour must be cooked while stirred, or lumps form and the sauce stays thin. Cooking the starch swells the granules and thickens the liquid evenly.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

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