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Fish Fricassee

A creamy fish fricassee made with milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Fish Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Combine milk, water, salt, pepper, bay leaf, mace, and nutmeg in a stewpan and heat until warm.

  2. Add fish pieces and bring to a boil.

  3. Simmer for about 10 minutes.

  4. Remove bay leaf and mace from stewpan.

Thicken and serve

  1. Knead butter and flour together in a separate bowl.

  2. Gradually add the butter–flour mixture to the stewpan, stirring gently.

  3. Once the flour is smoothly mixed in, add lemon juice and additional seasoning to taste.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes flaky as it cooks in the liquid.
Milk
Provides the creamy liquid base and gives the sauce its richness and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with flour to help thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the butter–flour mixture. Flour clumps if dropped in unevenly, so adding it gradually while stirring gently lets it disperse and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, 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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