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A sauce made with butter, cream, egg yolk, lemon, anchovy, parsley, chives, capers, flour, and fish cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauces for

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter sauce

  1. Boil ½ cup melted butter with 2 tablespoons thick cream.

  2. Mix 1 egg yolk with 1 tablespoon cream and stir into the sauce after cooling for 1 minute.

  3. Add juice of 1 lemon and ¼ teaspoon salt, stirring over heat until just boiling.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in 1 ounce fresh butter until dissolved.

  5. Serve the sauce in a tureen or over the fish.

Make the anchovy sauce

  1. For anchovy sauce, pound 1 boned anchovy with 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, 1 tablespoon chopped chives or minced shallot, 1 tablespoon capers, and 2 teaspoons flour until smooth.

  2. Stir this mixture into 1 cup of the fish cooking liquid and let it boil for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Serve in a tureen.

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. Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it gently heats, giving it a smooth, emulsified body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream.
Flour
Thickens the anchovy sauce as it boils with the fish cooking liquid.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that flavours the anchovy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens only gently. If the sauce is too hot when the yolk goes in, it can scramble and turn grainy. Cooling the sauce briefly and stirring constantly keeps it smooth.

“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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