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Sauce

Almond Sauce for Moulded Fish

A creamy almond sauce made with butter, flour, cream, almonds, lemon, wine, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Almond Sauce for Moulded Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped almonds and cook until browned.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour.

  4. Slowly add the cream, stirring continuously until smooth.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and a splash of wine or sherry.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the main nutty flavour and toasted browning in the sauce.
Butter
Browns to add nutty flavour and carries the almonds' aroma into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.
Cream
Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce a rich, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Slowly add the cream, stirring continuously until smooth. Adding liquid to a flour and butter roux too quickly, or without constant stirring, can trap lumps of flour. Gradual addition with steady stirring lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, butter, flour, cream, pepper, wine):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, butter, flour, cream, pepper, wine. 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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