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White Fish Sauce

A sauce made with white wine, water, nutmeg, lemon peel, anchovies, vinegar, butter, and flour, served over boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

White Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine white wine and water.

  2. Add nutmeg, grated lemon peel, and anchovies.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes, then strain the mixture.

  4. Stir in vinegar.

  5. Roll butter in flour, then stir it into the sauce.

  6. Bring to a boil and pour over boiled 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 body.
Flour
Coats the butter and thickens the sauce as it heats.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.
White wine
Provides acidity and aroma as the base liquid.

The step that matters

Roll butter in flour, then stir it into the sauce. Flour coated on butter disperses more evenly when stirred in, so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than forming lumps. Bringing it to a boil afterward lets the starch fully swell and thicken.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, lemon, vinegar, butter, flour):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, lemon, vinegar, butter, flour. 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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