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Sauce

Holstein Sauce for Boiled Fish

A sauce made from fish water, white wine, flour, butter, egg yolk, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Holstein Sauce for Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until combined.

  3. Add the fish water and white wine, stirring until it boils.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, add more fish water.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Finish and serve

  1. In a serving bowl, combine the egg yolk and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the boiling sauce into the bowl and add a walnut-sized piece of butter on top.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce body.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies and thickens the sauce, adding richness and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour to the liquid base.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling sauce into the egg yolk and lemon mixture. Egg yolk can scramble if it meets very hot liquid too quickly. Pouring the hot sauce in gradually while whisking, and not returning the mixture to high heat, helps the yolk thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, white wine, flour, butter, egg, lemon, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, white wine, flour, butter, egg, lemon, pepper. 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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