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Steamed Fish with Sauce

A steamed fish fillet served with a sauce made from milk, butter, flour, and Liebig Extract of Meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Steamed Fish with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Fillet and skin the fish.

  2. Lay the fillets on a buttered plate and cover with another plate.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Set the plate over a pan of boiling water and cook for 5 to 15 minutes, until the fillets are white and firm.

  2. Break up the bones and skin, place them in a pan, and add the milk; simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Melt the butter in a separate pan, add the flour, and stir until smooth.

  4. Add enough liquid from the bones to create a thick sauce, then stir in the lemon juice, Liebig Extract of Meat, and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil gently for 2 to 3 minutes, strain over the fillets, and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

Sole or small plaice
Forms the delicate white fillets that are steamed until firm and flaky.
Milk
Liquid base that, with the fish bones, forms the body of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that melts with the flour to start the roux for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the melted butter.

The step that matters

Adding the bone liquid to the roux. Liquid added to a flour and butter mixture should be added gradually while stirring. This keeps the sauce smooth and lump-free, and lets it thicken evenly as the starch swells in the heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, meat, flour. 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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