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Sauce for Salmon and Other Fish

A sauce made from boiled milk thickened with cornstarch, butter, egg, lemon juice, mace, cayenne, and pepper, served over salmon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sauce for Salmon and Other Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat one cupful of milk to a boil.

  2. While heating, add the cornstarch (mixed with cold water), the liquor from the salmon, one great spoonful of butter, one raw egg beaten light, the juice of half a lemon, mace, and cayenne pepper to taste, stirring continuously.

  3. Add the egg to the thickened milk when you have stirred in the butter and liquor.

  4. Take from the fire, season, and let it stand in hot water for three minutes, covered.

  5. Lastly, put in lemon juice and turn out immediately.

Serve

  1. Pour it all over and around the salmon.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

796Calories
28 gProtein
26 gFat
110 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg
Enriches and further thickens the sauce when stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the egg to the thickened milk. Raw egg can curdle or scramble if it meets very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring continuously and adding it to the sauce once it has thickened helps it blend smoothly and set into a creamy texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, pepper. 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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