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Sauce

Piquante Sauce for Fish

A sauce made with butter, flour, fish stock, eggs, cream, salt, pepper, gherkins, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,516 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Piquante Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over gentle heat and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the fish stock and stir until the mixture reaches a boiling point.

Add the egg mixture

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream, salt, and pepper.

  2. Slowly add the boiling sauce to the egg mixture while stirring with a wooden spoon.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir for about two minutes, ensuring it does not boil or curdle.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the chopped gherkins and vinegar.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while forming the base roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with butter to give it body.
Eggs
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the sauce.
Gherkins
Add a sharp, tangy bite that gives the sauce its piquant character.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling sauce to the eggs. Egg proteins set at high heat, so if the hot sauce is added too quickly or the mixture boils, the eggs can scramble or curdle. Adding it slowly while stirring tempers the eggs gradually, and keeping the sauce below boiling keeps it smooth.

“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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