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Creamed Fish on Toast

Flaked cooked fish topped with a creamy sauce served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Prepare the sauce

  1. Flake the cooked fish into a saucepan and heat with 1 cup of milk until thoroughly warmed.

  2. In a separate saucepan, heat 1 cup of rich milk and whisk in 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of butter, ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, and ¼ teaspoon of black pepper to the thickened milk.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of cream if desired.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare 4 slices of buttered toast, adding a drop of lemon juice or catsup on each slice.

  2. Place the toast on a hot platter, top with the heated fish, and pour the cream sauce over the fish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cooked fish
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it substance and flavor.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, carrying the flour's thickening and the seasoning.

The step that matters

Whisking the flour into the hot milk. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not first mixed smooth with cold milk and whisked well. Whisking while the milk heats disperses the starch so it thickens evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. 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.

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