Skip to main content
Main

Pomfret Fillets with Caper Sauce

A fish dish of pomfret fillets simmered in a gravy and topped with a caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pomfret Fillets with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish and gravy

  1. Fillet the pomfret and make a fish gravy with the bones and trimmings, flavored with onion and celery.

  2. Simmer the fillets, rolled in curls, in this gravy; drain and place on a hot dish.

Make the caper sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, melt butter and flour, then moisten with fish liquor until smooth.

  2. Add minced capers and, off the heat, mix in egg yolks and melted butter just before serving.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fillets and add a few drops of aromatic vinegar if desired.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pomfret fillets
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the gravy until tender.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the fish liquor into a smooth, coating sauce base.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce, giving it a creamy, velvety texture when warm.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty acidity that cuts the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Removing it from the heat and adding them just before serving keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, fish, capers, egg, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, fish, capers, egg, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes