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Fillets of Brill, Polish Sauce

Fillets of brill baked with lemon and seasoned, served with a sauce of onion, carrot, anchovy, stock, sugar, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fillets of Brill, Polish Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut each fillet into 3 pieces and lay them in a well-buttered baking dish.

  3. Sprinkle seasoning over the fillets and squeeze the juice of 2 lemons on top.

  4. Cover with buttered paper and bake for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt a piece of butter the size of a walnut.

  2. Add sliced onion and carrot, along with some seasoning, and lightly fry.

  3. Stir in the anchovy sauce, stock, sugar, and roux; boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  5. Add blanched and finely chopped parsley and grated horseradish to the sauce.

  6. Let the sauce boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fillets in a circle on a serving plate, overlapping them.

  2. Pour the boiling sauce over the fillets and serve hot.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brill fillets
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the oven under buttered paper.
Roux
Thickens the stock so the sauce coats the fish rather than running off.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that brightens the fish and the sauce.
Anchovy sauce
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce after adding the roux. The roux needs to boil long enough to cook out its raw floury taste and thicken the stock evenly. Stirring while it heats helps prevent lumps from forming.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, carrot, parsley, horseradish, anchovy, sauce, sugar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, carrot, parsley, horseradish, anchovy, sauce, sugar. 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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