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Sauce

Cream Sauce for Fish

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, anchovy essence, and chili vinegar or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, knead together the butter and flour with a strong knife until smooth.

  2. Place the saucepan over gentle heat until the butter is melted.

  3. Add the salt and cayenne, and simmer for one minute.

  4. Gradually stir in the cream and keep stirring until the sauce boils.

  5. Mix in the essence of anchovies and chili vinegar or lemon juice.

Variations

  1. For a variation, add diced shelled shrimp or lobster, or omit the anchovies and add finely minced boiled parsley.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a smooth, silky body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stable sauce that holds together on the fish.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, and thickens further as the sauce is brought to a boil.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth that gives the sauce its characteristic flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream. Adding cream gradually while stirring keeps the flour smoothly dispersed, preventing lumps. Stirring until it boils lets the starch thicken the sauce fully.

“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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