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Cream Sauce for Fish

A creamy sauce made with milk, cornstarch, butter, egg, pepper, salt, and parsley, served over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until scalding.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little water and stir it into the hot milk.

  3. Once thickened, add the butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  4. Beat the egg lightly and gradually pour the sauce over it.

  5. Return the mixture to the heat and stir for one minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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 of the sauce, which thickens when heated with starch.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and adds body when gently heated into it.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the heat and stir for one minute. The egg must be warmed gradually so it thickens without scrambling. Heating too fast or without constant stirring can curdle the egg into lumps, so keep the heat gentle and keep stirring.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, 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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