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Roe Sauce

A sauce made from fish roes, mustard, vinegar, and butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roe Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Boil or fry the fish roes until cooked.

  2. Sieve the roes to remove any solids.

Make the sauce

  1. Season the sieved roes with salt, pepper, mixed mustard, and French vinegar.

  2. Stir two tablespoons of the roe mixture into a pint of plain white sauce or melted butter.

  3. Add a few drops of essence of anchovies to enhance the flavor.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with the fish from which the roes were taken.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Roe + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Roes of any fish
Provides the main flavor and a soft, grainy texture once cooked and sieved.
Plain white sauce or melted butter
Forms the creamy base that carries the roe flavor and gives the sauce body.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich roe and butter flavors.
Mixed mustard
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Sieve the roes. Sieving removes solid membranes and lumps so the sauce becomes smooth rather than grainy or stringy when stirred into the base.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, fish, pepper, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, fish, pepper, vinegar, sauce. 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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