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Sauce for Boiled Fish

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 saucepan, combine milk and water and heat until scalding.

  2. In a small bowl, mix flour with a little cold water to form a paste, then stir it into the hot mixture.

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

Prepare the eggs and serve

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

  2. Pour the sauce over the fish and top with sliced eggs 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
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its body and mild richness.
Flour
Thickens the hot liquid into a smooth sauce when mixed into a paste first.
Eggs
Add richness and help thicken the sauce as they are stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the hot milk mixture. Flour clumps if added dry or without first being blended into a smooth paste with cold liquid. Stirring it into the hot liquid while mixing keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly without lumps.

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 →

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