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Fish Sauce

A creamy sauce made with boiled milk, butter, flour, wine, capers, egg, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the boiled milk in a saucepan until it comes to a boil.

  2. Stir in a well-beaten egg, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Cream the flour and butter until smooth, then stir into the milk until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Place the capers in a sauce dish and pour the sauce over them.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour 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

Egg
Thickens the sauce as it sets with the heated milk and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk together with the butter to give the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness, and helps the flour blend without lumps.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny flavour that contrasts with the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the egg into the milk gently. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding the beaten egg to very hot milk without constant stirring can scramble it into lumps instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, wine, egg, 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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