Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Fish Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Mix the milk and fish drippings in a saucepan.
Add salt and pepper, and stir until smooth.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
In a separate bowl, combine butter and flour.
Stir the butter and flour mixture into the boiling liquid.
Finish and serve
Once thickened, add the chopped hard boiled egg before serving.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,432 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the thickened sauce is built on.
- Flour
- Its starch swells as it heats in the liquid, thickening the sauce.
- Butter
- Combined with flour to form a smooth paste that blends into the sauce without clumping.
- Fish drippings
- Supply the main savory, fish-based flavor of the sauce.
The step that matters
Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps when it hits hot liquid unevenly. Stirring as you add it keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it heats.
“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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