Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce for Fried Fish or Fish Balls

A mustard-based sauce with pickles, vinegar, and butter, served cold with fried fish or fish balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce for Fried Fish or Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a granite saucepan, mix the dry mustard, flour, salt, butter, sugar, and vinegar in the order given.

  2. Add the boiling water and stir over heat until thickened and smooth.

  3. Stir in the chopped pickles and serve cold.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Dry mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, sauce-like consistency when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sharp mustard flavour.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and sharpness with sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling water into the flour mixture. Flour thickens only when heated with liquid, and the starch must be stirred constantly over heat so it swells evenly. Stopping early or letting it sit can leave lumps or a thin, uneven sauce.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes