Skip to main content
Sauce

Tench, Sauces for

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, water, cream, anchovy, soy sauce, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Tench, Sauces for

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter to a smooth paste with the flour.

  2. Add the water and stir the mixture over low heat for 2 minutes.

  3. Pour in the cream (or milk) and add the minced anchovy.

  4. Stir the sauce over low heat until just before boiling.

  5. Add the Indian soy, stir for 1-2 minutes, then season with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + anchovytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid together so the sauce turns smooth and coats the fish.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base, adding richness and a silky, creamy texture.
Anchovy
Melts into the sauce, adding savoury depth that rounds out the flavour.
Indian soy
Adds salty, savoury depth and a darker colour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances the savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat until just before boiling. Cream and milk can scorch or curdle if overheated, and flour-thickened sauces can turn lumpy or grainy if they boil hard or unevenly. Gentle, steady heat keeps the sauce smooth and silky.

“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

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes