Name: Creamed Fish on Toast
Ingredients: 1 scant pint cooked fish, flaked; 1 cup milk; 1 tablespoon flour; 2 teaspoons butter; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 1 tablespoon cream (optional); 4 slices of bread, buttered; lemon juice or catsup (for serving)

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creamed Fish on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Heat the flaked fish in a saucepan with 1 cup of milk until thoroughly heated.
In a separate pot, heat another cup of milk and thicken it with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with a little cold milk.
Add 2 teaspoons of butter, ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, and ¼ teaspoon of black pepper to the thickened milk.
Stir in 1 tablespoon of cream if desired.

Assemble and serve

Prepare 4 slices of buttered toast, adding a drop of lemon juice or catsup on each slice.
Place the hot fish on the toast and pour the cream sauce over it.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 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

Fish: Provides the main protein and the flaky texture of the dish.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its flavor.
Flour: Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, coating sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, mellow flavor to the sauce.
Bread: Gives a buttered toasted base that holds the sauced fish.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk smoothly. Flour added dry to hot liquid clumps, because its starch grains swell unevenly on the surface. Mixing the flour with a little cold milk first spreads the grains out, so they hydrate evenly as the milk heats and the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

Coconutfits about as well
Lemonthe original
Figfits about as well
Vanillafits about as well

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

Brown Bread461 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Fried Fish120 recipes

Fish Croquettes81 recipes

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Creamed Fish on Toast