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Cream Sauce for Salt or Fresh Fish, or for Vegetables

A butter‑flour cream sauce flavored with parsley, onion, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and optional horseradish, served with fish or vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 Sauce for Salt or Fresh Fish, or for Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour, parsley, grated onion, pepper, salt, and nutmeg; mix well.

  3. Pour in the cream or rich milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir continuously for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with fresh fish, adding a pinch of horseradish if desired.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the fat base that carries the flour and gives the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the butter and liquid, giving it body.
Cream or rich milk
Provides the liquid and fat that make the sauce smooth and creamy.
White onion
Adds savory aroma and background flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while the sauce comes to a boil. Flour can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly. Continuous stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, cream. 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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