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Cream Sauce for Fish

A light cream sauce flavored with parsley, onion, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and optional horseradish, simmered over medium heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix parsley, grated onion, pepper, salt, and nutmeg in a bowl.

  2. Add cream or milk and stir well.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. If using with fresh fish, stir in a little horseradish 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 + 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. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth body.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and mild flavour to the sauce.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, green herbal flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Simmering the cream mixture. Cream and milk can scorch or boil over if heated too hard, so gentle heat over medium and a steady simmer keeps the sauce smooth and prevents it from catching on the base of the pan.

Swap the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, onion, pepper, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, onion, 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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