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Creamed Fish

A creamy fish dish layered with crackers and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil any fresh fish and pick it to pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, mix the cream, flour, chopped onion, and butter.

  2. Set the pot on the fire and stir until the mixture thickens.

Layer and bake

  1. In a deep pan, layer the fish mixture and crackers alternately until the dish is full.

  2. Bake until the top is 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cream
Forms the body of the sauce that coats the fish and crackers.
Flour
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and softens the sauce.
Fish
Provides the main protein, flaked and layered through the dish.
Crackers
Soak up the sauce as they layer, adding structure and bulk.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce until it thickens. Flour must be stirred over heat so its starch swells evenly in the cream; if it is left unstirred, lumps form and the sauce can scorch on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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