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Sauce

Another Fish Sauce

A creamy sauce made from fish stock, butter, flour, cream, egg yolks, tomato sauce, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter with the flour until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the water from the boiling fish, stirring continuously.

  3. In another bowl, beat the cream with the egg yolks until smooth.

  4. Add the cream mixture and tomato sauce to the butter mixture, stirring well.

  5. Warm the sauce gently until the flour is cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with thin slices of lemon on top.

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

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

  2. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body and structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and a smooth, creamy texture.
Cream
Contributes fat and moisture, softening the sauce and making it richer.

The step that matters

Warm the sauce gently until the flour is cooked through. Flour thickens only after its starch granules swell with heat, and it tastes raw if not fully cooked. Egg yolks can curdle if the sauce gets too hot, so gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth while the flour cooks through.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, fish, cream, egg, lemon):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, fish, cream, egg, 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.

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