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Cream Sauce for Fish

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, anchovy essence, and seasonings, served over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, knead together the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Place the saucepan over low heat until the butter is melted.

  3. Add salt and cayenne pepper, and simmer for one minute.

  4. Gradually stir in the cream and keep stirring until it boils.

  5. Mix in the essence of anchovies and vinegar or lemon juice.

Adjust and vary

  1. For a variation, add shelled shrimps or diced lobster.

  2. If the sauce is too thick, thin it with a little milk.

  3. For a poultry sauce, omit the anchovies and add minced parsley.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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
Melted with flour to form the base, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce body.
Cream
Adds richness and body, and thickens into a silky sauce when brought to a boil.
Essence of anchovies
Provides a salty, savoury depth that gives the sauce its fish character.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cream and keep stirring until it boils. Adding cream all at once to a flour-butter base can form lumps. Gradual addition with constant stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, and boiling fully activates the flour's thickening so the sauce turns smooth and lump-free.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, vinegar, pepper, shrimp, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, vinegar, pepper, shrimp, milk. 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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