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A Most Refined, Exquisite Sauce Fok Boiled Fish

A butter-based sauce with lemon, parsley, and optional vinegar and mustard for boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Most Refined, Exquisite Sauce Fok Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Beat in the salt, white pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Add the chopped parsley and mix well.

  4. If desired, stir in vinegar and mixed mustard 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the butter.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal flavor.

The step that matters

Beat in the salt, white pepper, and lemon juice. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water, and adding acid too quickly or to warm butter can make the sauce look curdled or separate. Beating steadily until smooth keeps the sauce creamy.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, white pepper, lemon, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, white pepper, lemon, 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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