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Sauce

Carmen Sauce for Boiled or Fried Fish

A sauce made from fish roes, livers, parsley, onion, capers, lemon juice, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and liver work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 79 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Fry the fish livers and roes slightly in olive oil.

  2. Add the minced parsley and onion, along with the salt, pepper, and spices.

  3. Once cooked, pound the mixture thoroughly in a mortar.

  4. Stir in the capers and lemon juice.

  5. Add enough olive oil to achieve the desired consistency and serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together79 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish roes
Provide the main body and rich flavor of the sauce when fried and pounded.
Fish livers
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture once fried and pounded.
Olive oil
Carries the flavors and adjusts the final smooth, spreadable consistency.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish flavor.

The step that matters

Pound the mixture thoroughly in a mortar. Pounding breaks down the cooked roes and livers into a smooth, cohesive paste. Incomplete pounding leaves lumps and uneven texture, so the oil added afterward cannot emulsify evenly into the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, roe, liver, parsley, pepper, lemon, olive):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, roe, liver, parsley, pepper, lemon, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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