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Sauce

White Sauce for Fish

A creamy white sauce made with butter, flour, fish stock, milk, shallot, celery, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir to form a roux.

  3. Gradually add the fish stock while stirring to avoid lumps.

  4. Boil the milk with the shallot and celery, then strain the mixture.

  5. Add the strained milk to the sauce and boil for one minute.

  6. Stir in the chopped parsley before serving.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Shallot + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together459 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while forming the roux.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as the roux cooks and the liquids are added.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds fish flavour.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the sauce's texture.
Shallot
Adds a mild aromatic onion flavour to the infused milk.

The step that matters

Adding the fish stock. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring keeps the starch in the roux dispersed, so the sauce stays smooth instead of forming lumps.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, fish, milk, shallot, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, fish, milk, shallot, 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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