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Clear Sauce for Fish

A clear sauce made with hot water, corn starch, lemon juice, butter, salt, and pepper for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Clear Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine hot water and corn starch, stirring until smooth.

  2. Add lemon juice, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the sauce is clear and thickened to the consistency of thick cream.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body and a smooth, clear texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smoother finish to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Cook until clear and thickened. Corn starch must be heated long enough to swell and thicken fully; undercooked starch leaves the sauce cloudy and thin. Stirring while heating keeps it smooth and prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, butter, pepper):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, pepper. 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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