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Sauce

Carmen Sauce for Boiled or Fried Fish

A fish roe and liver sauce seasoned with parsley, onion, capers, and lemon, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Carmen Sauce for Boiled or Fried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the liver and roe slightly in olive oil.

  2. Add the minced parsley and onion, along with the other ingredients except for the lemon juice.

  3. Once cooked, pound the mixture thoroughly in a mortar.

  4. Stir in the capers and lemon juice, adding enough olive oil to achieve the desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish roe
Provides the main body and rich, savoury flavour of the sauce.
Fish liver
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture when fried and pounded.
Olive oil
Carries the flavour, enriches the texture, and sets the final consistency.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it cooks with the fish.
Capers
Contribute a sharp, briny acidity that brightens the rich base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that cuts through the fat and lifts the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Pound the mixture thoroughly in a mortar. Pounding breaks down the fried roe and liver into a smooth, emulsified paste. Under-pounding leaves a coarse texture, and the olive oil added later can then separate rather than bind evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, roe, liver, parsley, pepper, lemon, olive):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, roe, liver, parsley, pepper, lemon, olive. 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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