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Sauce Bebcy

A buttery fish sauce with shallots, wine, fish stock, velouté, lemon, parsley, and fish glaze, served with poached fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce Bebcy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the chopped shallots in a saucepan.

  2. Moisten with white wine and fish stock or fish liquor.

  3. Reduce the mixture to about one-third of its volume.

  4. Add the velouté sauce and let it boil for a while.

  5. Remove from heat and slowly stir in the butter.

  6. Add a few drops of fish glaze, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve with medium-sized poached fish.

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

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Add aromatic flavour as they soften and sweeten in the reduction.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth to the reduced base of the sauce.
Fish stock or fish liquor
Provides the savoury fish flavour that forms the body of the sauce.
Velouté sauce
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, coating texture.
Butter
Stirred in off the heat to add richness and a glossy, silky finish.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter off the heat. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water. If the sauce is too hot or the butter is added too quickly, the emulsion can break, leaving the sauce greasy and separated instead of 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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