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Sauce

White Sauce for Fish

A simple white sauce made with butter, flour, milk or fish stock, seasoned with salt, lemon juice, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

White Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rinse a small saucepan with cold water.

  2. Melt the butter in the saucepan over low heat, ensuring it does not brown.

  3. Add the flour and stir well with a wooden spoon.

  4. Gradually add the milk or fish stock, stirring continuously until boiling.

  5. Season with salt and lemon juice, then boil for 2-3 minutes to cook the flour.

  6. For variation, stir in finely 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and carries flavour while it melts into the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid, forming a roux.
Milk or fish stock
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk or fish stock. Adding liquid slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour smooth, so lumps do not form. Boiling then cooks the flour, which removes its raw taste and fully thickens the sauce.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

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