Skip to main content
Main

Cream Sauce for Fish

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, anchovy essence, and seasonings for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, knead together the butter and flour with a strong knife until smooth.

  2. Place the saucepan over gentle heat until the butter is melted.

  3. Add salt and cayenne pepper, and simmer for one minute.

  4. Gradually stir in the cream until the sauce boils, stirring constantly.

  5. Mix in the essence of anchovies and vinegar or lemon juice.

Variation

  1. For a richer sauce, substitute the cream with veal gravy or beef stock and follow the same steps.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the spoon.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a silky, smooth texture.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth of flavour to the sauce.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cream until the sauce boils, stirring constantly.. Adding cream slowly while stirring keeps the flour-butter mixture smooth. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan as the starch thickens.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, vinegar, pepper, shrimp, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, vinegar, pepper, shrimp, milk. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes