Skip to main content
Main

Sardine Sauce

A sauce made from sardines, butter, water or broth, bay leaf, shallot, pepper, nutmeg or mace, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sardine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Remove the bones from the sardines.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add water or broth to create a sauce of ordinary thickness.

  3. Add the fish bones, bay leaf, shallot, pepper, nutmeg or mace, and lemon juice to the sauce.

  4. Boil until properly flavored, then strain the sauce.

Finish

  1. Chop the sardines small and add them to the strained sauce.

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

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

  2. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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

Sardines
Provide the main fish flavor and body once chopped into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, sweet onion-like aroma as it simmers into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until properly flavored, then strain. Simmering extracts flavor from the bones, bay leaf and shallot into the liquid. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce weak, and straining removes solids so the sauce stays smooth before the chopped sardines are added.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes