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Sauce

Fish Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, sour cream, flour, lemon juice, butter, and fish stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix egg yolks, sour cream, flour, and lemon juice in a bowl.

  2. Add enough water from the fish that was boiled to reach desired consistency.

  3. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  4. Add the mixture to the butter.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  6. Stir constantly until thickened.

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

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

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + fishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Sour cream
Adds tang and smooth body to the sauce.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce and keeps it from separating.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce gets too hot or heats too fast. Stirring constantly spreads the heat evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Vanillafits about as well

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