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Sauce

Cream Sauce for Fish

A creamy sauce made with fish stock, cream, egg yolks, butter, flour, lemon, parsley, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks.

  2. Add a little fish stock and half the cream, along with the lemon juice.

  3. In a pan, melt the butter, then add the flour and the remaining fish stock.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the egg mixture.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add more cream.

  6. Return to the stove and stir constantly until creamy to prevent curdling.

  7. Remove from heat and stir in the chopped parsley and capers.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, creamy body as they set gently with heat.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth base that holds the sauce together.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and forms the base roux with the flour.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, loosening the sauce to a smooth, pourable texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Return to the stove and stir constantly. Egg yolks can scramble and curdle when heated too quickly or left unstirred. Constant gentle stirring keeps the heat even so the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly instead of setting in lumps.

“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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