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Fish Cream Sauce, for Croquettes and Patties

A creamy sauce made from hot cream, butter, cornstarch, and seasonings, used for fish croquettes and patties.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Cream Sauce, for Croquettes and Patties

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter in a separate saucepan until bubbling.

  3. Add the cornstarch to the butter and stir until well mixed.

  4. Gradually add about one-third of the cream, stirring continuously.

  5. As the mixture boils and thickens, add more cream until perfectly smooth.

  6. Add the seasonings and mix while hot with the meat.

  7. The sauce should be thick, similar to drop batter.

  8. Optionally, add one beaten egg for extra creaminess.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Cream
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a smooth, rich sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the starch smoothly into the sauce.
Cornstarch or flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats and gelatinizes in the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the cream gradually. Adding cream to the starch-butter mixture a little at a time, while stirring, lets the starch disperse evenly. Adding it all at once can create lumps that are hard to smooth out.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, flour, white pepper, celery, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, white pepper, celery, pepper. 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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