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Sauce

Blonde Fish Sauce

A light sauce made with stock, onion, mushrooms, parsley, lemon, white wine, butter, and egg yolks, served with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Blonde Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stew pan, combine stock, onion, mushrooms, parsley, lemon, and white wine.

  2. Simmer over low heat for 30 minutes.

  3. Gradually add melted butter and beaten egg yolks, stirring continuously for 4-5 minutes without boiling.

  4. Strain through a sieve and serve with any kind of 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the butter and liquid into a smooth, creamy emulsion as they set gently.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the base liquid.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce boils, the yolks can scramble and the emulsion can break, leaving it grainy and separated. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, parsley, lemon, white wine, butter, egg. 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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