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Sauce

Sauce for Fried or Broiled Carp

A buttery anchovy and lemon sauce for fried or broiled carp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sauce for Fried or Broiled Carp

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Rub the butter with the flour in a saucepan.

  2. Add the water and melt the mixture over low heat.

  3. Stir in the thick cream and chopped anchovy.

  4. Bring to a boil, then add the Indian soy for color.

  5. Transfer to a sauce-tureen and season with salt and lemon juice.

Make the carp sauce

  1. To make the sauce for carp, combine white wine, minced anchovies, onions, and orange or lemon peel in the gravy.

  2. Melt the butter and add the gravy mixture.

  3. If desired, add the raw egg yolk and bring to a boil, then squeeze in lemon or orange juice.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  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 sauce with fat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, producing a smooth, creamy texture.
Anchovy
Contributes a salty, savory depth that blends into the sauce.
Onions
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory flavor to the gravy mixture.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, anchovy, lemon, white wine, onion):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, anchovy, lemon, white wine, onion. 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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