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Sauce

Melted Butter for Fish

A melted butter sauce flavored with anchovy essence, soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, cayenne pepper, chili vinegar, or lemon juice, served warm over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Melted Butter for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan until it is thick enough to adhere to the fish.

  2. Dilute the melted butter with your choice of essence of anchovy, soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, cayenne pepper, chili vinegar, or lemon juice.

  3. Serve the sauce warm over the fish.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the rich base that coats and clings to the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce.
Essence of anchovy
Adds savoury depth and saltiness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Melting the butter to the right thickness. Butter that is overheated or too thin will split and run off the fish instead of clinging to it. Melting gently and stopping once it is thick enough helps the sauce stay emulsified and coat the fish.

“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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