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Cream Sauce for Fish

A creamy sauce for fish made with butter, flour, cream, anchovy essence, and optional seafood or spices.

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. Place over gentle heat 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.

Finish and vary

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

  2. If desired, add pounded mace and adjust thickness with 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
Melts with the flour to form a smooth base that gives the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cream
Adds body and a rich, smooth texture as the sauce thickens.
Essence of anchovies
Contributes a savoury, salty depth that gives the sauce its fishy character.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cream until the sauce boils. Adding cream all at once to a flour-thickened base can leave lumps. Adding it slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it comes to a boil.

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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