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Fish with Mushroom Sauce

A fish dish served with a sauce of butter, flour, mushrooms, fish sauce, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fish with Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the fish

  1. Cook the fish with vegetables and seasoning as usual.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Whisk in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the chopped mushrooms and fish sauce, stirring until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks and lemon juice.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that helps the sauce set smooth.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, helping the sauce become creamy as it cools slightly.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the base of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavor and texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble if they meet a hot sauce directly. Removing the pan from the heat before adding them lets the sauce thicken smoothly without curdling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, egg, flour, mushroom, fish sauce):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Pumpkinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, egg, flour, mushroom, fish sauce. 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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