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Sauce for Boiled Fish

A sauce made from milk, water, flour, eggs, butter, celery, vinegar, salt, and pepper, served over sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce for Boiled Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and water and heat until scalding.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water to form a paste, then stir it into the hot milk mixture.

  3. Add the eggs, season with salt, pepper, celery, and vinegar.

  4. Melt the butter and stir it in.

Serve

  1. Peel the hard-boiled eggs, slice them, and lay them over the dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the eggs and serve.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce its body and creamy flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Eggs
Add richness and further thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and a mellow flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the hot milk. Egg proteins set at high heat, so if the eggs go into a boiling or very hot mixture they can scramble and curdle. Keep the heat moderate and stir steadily so the eggs thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, pepper, vinegar, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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

More sauce for boiled fish recipes

Egg 7Plain 5Butter 4 See all 18 →

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