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Almond Sauce for Fish

A sauce made from stock, egg yolks, cayenne pepper, salt, sugar, and grated almonds, served over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Almond Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine stock, egg yolks, cayenne pepper, salt, and sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Stir in the grated almonds.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cooked 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. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Pepper + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

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

  5. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set when heated, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the yolks thicken and the other flavours are carried in.
Almonds
Add body, a nutty flavour and a slightly grainy texture to the sauce.
Fish
The main dish that the finished sauce is poured over.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils too hard, the proteins tighten too far and the sauce can curdle or turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, pepper, sugar. 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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