Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Fish and Sauce

A simple boiled fish served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Fish and Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Clean, trim, and wipe the fish.

  2. Place the fish in a saucepan of hot water with vinegar and salt.

  3. Cook gently for about 10 minutes, testing with a skewer to see if cooked.

  4. Drain the fish.

  5. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with parsley.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour smoothly with a spoon and cook while stirring.

  3. Add the milk and stir until it boils.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  5. Pour the sauce into a sauce boat or over the fish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Cod, whiting, or sole
Provides the flaky white fish that is the main part of the dish.
Butter
Melts to form the fat base of the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk or fish stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the flour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the fish gently. Gentle heat keeps the delicate flesh moist and tender and prevents it from breaking apart. Testing with a skewer shows when the fish is opaque and cooked through without overcooking it.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes