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Sauce

Melted Butter Sauce

A buttery sauce flavored with anchovy essence, cayenne, mace, sea salt, cream, and fish flesh.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Melted Butter Sauce

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 ↓

Melted Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan to produce the sauce.

  2. Season the melted butter with anchovy essence, cayenne, mace, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the rich cream and mix gradually with the pounded coral until liquefied.

  4. Pour the coral mixture into the sauce and stir well.

  5. Add the fish flesh to the sauce and heat thoroughly over the fire without boiling.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Pepper + fishtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 the seasonings evenly.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and a smoother, silkier texture to the melted butter.
Pounded coral from fish
Contributes flavour and colour to the sauce as it is blended in.
Fish flesh
Adds the main fish flavour and body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the fish flesh without boiling. Boiling can cause the emulsified butter and cream to separate, leaving the sauce greasy and grainy. Gentle heat keeps it smooth while the fish warms through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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