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Baked Bream and Egg Sauce

A baked bream topped with white sauce, boiled egg, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Bream and Egg Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the bream.

  2. Rub dripping onto a baking sheet.

  3. Place the fish on the sheet.

  4. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over the fish.

  5. Cover the fish with a piece of paper rubbed with dripping.

Bake and remove skin

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes, or longer if the fish is large.

  2. Remove the skin and fins.

  3. Place the skin and fins on a dish.

Make the egg sauce and serve

  1. Pour the white sauce over the fish.

  2. Ensure the sauce is thick enough to coat the fish.

  3. Finely chop the parsley.

  4. Hard boil the egg. Cut the egg in half. Chop the yolk or sieve it. Chop the white.

  5. Arrange the egg and parsley in alternate rows over the fish.

  6. Garnish with lemon slices.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bream
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender flesh.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating that keeps the fish from drying out.
Egg
Adds rich texture and color through the chopped yolk and white on top.
Dripping (or butter)
Adds fat that helps prevent sticking and promotes gentle browning.

The step that matters

Ensure the sauce is thick enough to coat the fish. A thin white sauce runs off and pools on the plate instead of clinging to the fish. Cooking the flour-thickened sauce until it thickens properly gives it body to coat.

“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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