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Fish Scallop

A creamy baked fish dish with anchovy sauce, mustard, walnut ketchup, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Scallop

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Carefully pick the fish from the bones and place it in a stew pan.

  2. Add cream, Anchovy sauce, prepared mustard, walnut ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  3. Heat the mixture on the stove until nearly hot, stirring occasionally, but do not let it boil.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the fish mixture to a deep dish and cover with a generous amount of bread crumbs.

  2. Dot the top with small pieces of butter and place in a 350°F (175°C) oven to 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the fish mixture soft and creamy.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the top brown and crisp.
Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it its flesh and flavor.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture without boiling. Heating the cream-based mixture gently until nearly hot, while stirring, keeps the cream smooth and prevents it from curdling or separating, which boiling can cause.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, cream, anchovy, sauce, mustard, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Sesamefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, cream, anchovy, sauce, mustard, ketchup, pepper. 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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