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Cream Fish

A baked dish of fish pieces in a thickened milk or cream sauce topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat milk or cream in a saucepan to make a cream sauce.

  2. Whisk in flour and cook until thickened.

  3. Stir in butter, pepper, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Break the fish into small pieces and pour the cream sauce over them.

  3. Cover with fine bread crumbs mixed with poultry seasoning if desired.

  4. Drizzle milk and butter over the crumbs.

  5. Bake for thirty minutes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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 cream sauce that coats the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and keeps the fish moist.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they bake over the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk in flour and cook until thickened. Flour must be cooked long enough in the hot liquid for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce; undercooked flour leaves a pasty, raw taste and a thin sauce.

“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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