Skip to main content
Main

Fish Bauce

A buttery sauce with lemon, pickled walnuts, and parsley, used for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fish Bauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Mix in lemon juice until well combined.

  3. Beat in the chopped pickled walnuts.

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

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

  2. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries flavour and, when creamed, traps air for a light, smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Pickled walnuts
Adds tangy, savoury flavour that gives the sauce its character.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma that lifts the rich butter.

The step that matters

Cream the butter until light and fluffy. Beating softened butter incorporates air, which makes the sauce light and spreadable. Butter that is too cold or under-beaten stays dense, and the other ingredients will not blend in evenly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes