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Sauce

Brown Fish Sauce {Sauce Bnme}

A brown sauce made from fish bones, butter, flour, cornflour, claret, stock, onion, herbs, mushrooms, salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Brown Fish Sauce {Sauce Bnme}

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the fish bones in butter over high heat.

  2. Add the onion and fry until softened.

  3. Stir in the flour and cornflour, cooking until browned.

  4. Add the herbs, mushrooms, and moisten with claret and stock.

  5. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes.

  6. Strain through a fine sieve, season to taste, and serve.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Fish + buttertop 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

Flour
Browns in the butter and thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Cornflour
Adds further thickening so the sauce becomes body-rich and smooth.
Butter
Carries the frying of the bones and onion, adding fat and rich flavour.
Fish bones
Release savoury flavour into the butter and stock as they fry and simmer.
Mushrooms
Add earthy, savoury depth to the liquid during simmering.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cornflour, cooking until browned. Starch browns slowly in fat; if it is pulled too early the sauce tastes raw and floury, and if it burns it turns bitter. Cook it steadily until it is evenly golden before adding liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, mushroom, pepper. 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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