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Fish in White Sauce

A fish dish simmered in a white sauce of rice flour, milk, and stock, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fish in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the rice flour, milk, white stock, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over medium heat until boiling.

  3. Boil for five minutes.

Finish

  1. Add the fish and cook for two minutes.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice and serve immediately.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets when heated and boiled.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
White stock
Forms the liquid base and adds savory flavor to the sauce.
Cooked white fish
Provides the main protein and flesh of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the sauce and fish.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for five minutes. Starch from the rice flour only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil and is held there. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and can leave a raw, floury taste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, milk, fish, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, milk, fish, pepper. 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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