Skip to main content
Main

Sauce for Boiled Fish

A creamy sauce made with milk, water, flour, eggs, celery, vinegar, butter, and hard‑boiled eggs, served over boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce for Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and water and heat until scalding.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little cold water to create a paste.

  3. Stir the flour paste into the hot milk and water mixture.

  4. Add the eggs, salt, pepper, celery, vinegar, and butter, stirring well.

Serve

  1. Slice the hard-boiled eggs and arrange them over the dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the sliced eggs 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the hot liquid into a smooth, pourable sauce when mixed into a paste first.
Eggs
Add richness and body to the sauce and set lightly when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main substance of the dish, sliced and set under the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour paste into the hot milk. Flour lumps if added dry or to very hot liquid unevenly. Blending it first with cold water into a smooth paste lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens without clumps.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, pepper, vinegar, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, pepper, vinegar, butter. 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.

More sauce for boiled fish recipes

Egg 7Plain 5Butter 4 See all 18 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes