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Sauce

White Fish-sauce

A white sauce made from butter, flour, and clarified fish broth, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Fish-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook over low heat until light yellow, without browning.

  3. Gradually stir in the clarified fish-broth.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes.

  5. Skim off any fat, then pour the sauce into a bowl and stir.

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 + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + fishtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries flavor while the flour cooks into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and liquid.
Clarified fish-broth
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a smooth velouté.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter without browning. Cooking the roux only until light yellow removes raw flour taste while keeping the flour's thickening power and a pale, clean color. Browning changes the flavor and color of the velouté.

“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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