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Fish and Butter Sauce

Fish fillets cooked in butter sauce with parsley, white pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,451 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Fish and Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Fillet the fish and cut them into strips.

  2. Wash the fish well in cold water and dry with a cloth.

  3. Twist the strips and lay them in a buttered soup plate.

  4. Sprinkle with white pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley.

Steam and serve

  1. Add the remaining butter, cover with another soup plate, and place over a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Cook for 45 minutes, reversing the plates once while cooking.

  3. Transfer to a hot dish and pour over the butter and parsley from cooking.

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 + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Whiting + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Whiting + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting or bream
Forms the delicate, flaky body of the dish once gently cooked through.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish tender during gentle steaming and forming the sauce.

The step that matters

Gentle steaming over boiling water. The fish is cooked between two plates over simmering water, so steam heat is gentle. Keeping the water at a steady boil and the plates sealed keeps the fish moist and prevents it from drying out over the long cook.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, butter, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, butter, parsley. 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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