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Baked Whitefish

A baked whitefish served with a butter‑flour sauce and sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Whitefish

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Stuff the fish with dressing.

  3. Sprinkle the outside with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Place the fish in a baking pan with enough water to prevent burning.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, warm the butter and flour until thoroughly mixed.

  2. Add a little salt and pepper, then pour in the scalded milk.

  3. Stir in the sliced hard-boiled eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the baked fish before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour 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

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through gently in the oven.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, helping the flour blend smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a mild richness.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft texture and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the butter and flour before adding milk. Cooking the butter and flour together forms a roux; if the milk is added without the mixture being thoroughly blended, lumps can form and the sauce will be uneven in texture.

“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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