Skip to main content
Main

Sauce for Boiled Fish

A creamy sauce made with milk, water, flour, eggs, celery, vinegar, and butter, served over boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce for Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine the milk and water and heat until scalding.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little cold water to create a paste.

  3. Stir the flour paste into the hot milk and water mixture.

  4. Add the eggs, salt, pepper, celery, vinegar, and butter; stir well.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then peel and slice them.

  2. Place the sliced eggs over the dish and pour the sauce on top before serving.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Milk
Provides the liquid base and a rich, creamy body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinizes its starch.
Eggs
Add richness and body, and thicken the sauce gently when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth mouthfeel and a silky finish to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour paste into the hot liquid. Flour clumps if added dry or to cold liquid. Mixing it first into a smooth paste and then stirring it into hot liquid lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, pepper, vinegar, butter. 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.

More sauce for boiled fish recipes

Egg 7Plain 5Butter 4 See all 18 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes