Skip to main content
Main

French Dishes

Fillet of shad served with a purée of sorrel, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Caron, Pierre, fl. 1886-1899 · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 25 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: scallop

Directions

Prepare the shad

  1. Clean the shad.

  2. Cut the shad into equal pieces, leaving the skin underneath.

  3. Place the pieces on a plate.

  4. Sprinkle a little salt on them.

  5. Add the juice of a lemon.

  6. Add a few branches of parsley.

Cook the shad

  1. A few moments before serving, put the pieces in a saucepan over a gentle fire for fifteen minutes, with a glass of white wine and an ounce of butter.

Make the sorrel purée and sauce

  1. Pick and clean a quart of sorrel.

  2. Blanch the sorrel in boiling water.

  3. Drain the sorrel.

  4. Press the sorrel through a sieve to make a purée.

  5. Put an ounce of butter in a saucepan with half an ounce of flour, a little salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  6. When the mixture begins to color slightly, add the sorrel purée and half a glass of cream.

  7. Simmer gently for ten minutes.

  8. Add the yolks of two eggs, which have been mixed in a little milk.

  9. Boil for five minutes longer.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

By Caron, Pierre, fl. 1886-1899. 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. See the original page.

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 + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  2. Sorrel + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + roetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + roetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 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

Shad
Forms the flaky main body of the dish, cooked gently in butter and wine.
Sorrel
Provides the tangy, acidic flavour and green colour of the purée.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set during gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the fish and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken the sauce as their proteins set, but if the sauce is too hot or boils hard after they go in, they can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle once they are added.

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sorrel, flour, sauce, egg, milk, roe):

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sorrel, flour, sauce, egg, milk, roe. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Lemon SauceIllustrationLemon Sauce236 recipesIllustration of Mushroom SoupIllustrationMushroom Soup60 recipesIllustration of Sorrel SoupIllustrationSorrel Soup23 recipesIllustration of Sorrel SaladIllustrationSorrel Salad9 recipes