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Sauce

Dutch Sauce for Fish

A sauce made with butter, flour, water, tarragon vinegar, egg yolks, and lemon juice, used for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, blend together the butter and flour.

  2. Add the water and tarragon vinegar, stirring for 1 minute.

  3. Incorporate the beaten egg yolks, stirring continuously until the mixture thickens. Do not let it boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the juice of half a lemon.

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. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together788 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Provides fat and smooth body, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water mixture so the sauce holds together.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and aromatic tarragon flavour to balance the richness.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil. Egg yolks begin to scramble when overheated, which makes the sauce grainy and split. Stirring constantly over gentle heat lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

“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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