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Sauce

Cream Sauce for Fish

A cream sauce flavoured with anchovy essence and lemon juice or chili vinegar, served with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, knead together the butter and flour with a strong knife until smooth.

  2. Place the saucepan over gentle heat until the butter is melted.

  3. Add the salt and cayenne, and simmer for one minute.

  4. Gradually stir in the cream until the sauce boils, stirring constantly.

  5. Mix in the essence of anchovies and chili vinegar or lemon juice.

Finish and vary

  1. For a variation, add shelled shrimps or diced lobster.

  2. If desired, add pounded mace with the cayenne.

  3. If the sauce is too thick, thin it with a few spoons of milk.

  4. For a poultry sauce, omit the anchovies and add minced boiled parsley.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Butter
Provides richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, and thickens the sauce further as it comes to a boil.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a savoury, salty depth that flavours the sauce.
Chili vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cream until the sauce boils, stirring constantly.. Adding cream slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, vinegar, shrimp, milk, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, vinegar, shrimp, milk, parsley. 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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