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Fish Creams

Fish Creams are a steamed fish mixture with a buttery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Fish Creams

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the halibut and pick it apart.

  2. Mash the halibut finely.

  3. Mix the egg whites, salt, pepper, and cream into the mixture thoroughly.

  4. Pack the mixture into small molds and steam for 20 minutes.

  5. Turn the molds onto a heated dish.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together the butter and flour.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water and let it boil.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolk.

  4. In another pan, combine the onion, bay leaf, and vinegar and reduce by half over heat.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Halibut
Forms the main body of the creams, giving them their flaky, tender bulk.
Egg whites
Set when steamed, giving the mixture structure and a light, firm texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the steamed creams tender rather than dry.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the boiling water into a sauce.
Egg yolk
Added off the heat to enrich and thicken the sauce without scrambling.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat. If the sauce is still boiling when the yolk goes in, the proteins can scramble, leaving lumps and a grainy texture instead of a smooth, enriched sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, cream, butter, flour, vinegar. 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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