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Sauce for Steamed Salmon

A creamy sauce made with milk, cornstarch, butter, tomato sauce, mace, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and a raw egg, served over steamed salmon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce for Steamed Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Thicken the milk with cornstarch, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and add butter, tomato sauce, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice.

  5. Add the raw egg just before serving to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over the steamed salmon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens into a smooth sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk as its starch swells, giving the sauce body.
Raw egg
Adds richness and helps emulsify the sauce when added off heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Add the raw egg just before serving. Raw egg proteins set when heated, so adding it to a hot sauce can curdle it. Adding it off heat, just before serving, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, tomato, sauce, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, tomato, sauce, pepper, lemon. 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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