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Sauce

Cream Sauce for Fish

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, anchovy essence, and chili vinegar, served over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 until smooth.

  2. Heat over a gentle fire until the butter is melted.

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

  4. Gradually stir in the cream until the sauce boils.

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

Adjust and finish

  1. For a richer sauce, add shelled shrimps or diced lobster.

  2. If too thick, thin with a little milk.

  3. For poultry, omit 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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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
Melted with flour to form the base, carrying flavour and giving the sauce richness.
Flour
Kneaded with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Cream
Stirred in to make the sauce smooth and rich, then brought to a boil.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth that flavours the sauce.
Chili vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream. Adding cream gradually while stirring keeps the flour-butter base smooth and lump-free. Cream added too fast can leave lumps in the sauce, and it can split if it is boiled too hard.

Swap the mace

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

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

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