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Sardine Sauce

A sauce made from sardines, butter, lemon, shallot, and Brand's Extract, thickened with flour and seasoned with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Sardine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the sardines, then chop them finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the Brand's Extract with water to make about ½ pint of gravy.

  2. Rub the butter with a little flour to thicken, then add it to the saucepan along with the thinly cut lemon rind and shallot.

  3. Season with salt, cayenne, and a pinch of nutmeg, and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the lemon rind and shallot, then add the lemon juice and sardines.

  5. Boil for an additional 3 to 4 minutes.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savoury flavour and body of the sauce once chopped and simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and, when rubbed with flour, helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smoother, more cohesive sauce.
Lemon
Rind adds aromatic oils while the juice contributes brightness and acidity.
Shallot
Adds a mild aromatic onion flavour that mellows during simmering.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice and sardines after removing the rind and shallot. Boiling the sardines and lemon juice for too long can make the fish tough and the acidic juice taste harsh, so timing the final simmer matters. Removing the rind and shallot first keeps the sauce smooth and the flavours clean.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, flour, pepper, nutmeg. 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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