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Cream Fish

A baked fish dish with a creamy sauce made from milk, butter, flour, onion, and seasonings, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Fish

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

  1. Boil the fish until cooked, then let it cool and pick it into pieces.

  2. In a pot, boil the milk with the onion tied in a bag.

Make the sauce

  1. Once the milk boils, stir in the butter and flour mixture until well combined.

  2. Cook the sauce thoroughly, then season with salt, red pepper, and chopped parsley.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the sauce with the fish, place in a baking dish, and sprinkle bread crumbs on top.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for a few minutes until golden.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, held together in the creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savory aroma while it is tied in a bag.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce thoroughly. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated enough to swell, and cooking it fully removes raw flour taste. Undercooked sauce can stay thin and taste pasty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, 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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