Skip to main content
Sauce

Fish Recipes

A creamy sauce made with codfish, lobster, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fish Recipes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour together without browning.

  2. Gradually add the fish stock and cream, stirring well.

  3. Add salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Cook gently for 10 minutes off the heat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  2. Stir in the pounded codfish and chopped lobster meat.

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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Fish + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Enriches the roux and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux with the melted butter.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the seafood flavour.
Cream
Adds body and smoothness, softening the sauce's texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety body.
Lobster meat
Adds sweet, delicate seafood flavour and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Beat in the egg yolks gradually. Adding yolks one at a time and mixing well after each helps them blend smoothly into the warm base. Adding them too quickly can cause them to scramble or curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of silky.

“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 fish sauce recipes

Anchovy 24White 9Dutch 8Broiled 5Brown 5Walnut 5 See all 106 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes