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Fish in White Sauce

Fish in white sauce is a halibut dish served with a butter‑flour sauce flavored with almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. In a pot, boil the fish bones and skin with the onion and red pepper.

  2. Reduce the stock to ½ cup.

  3. Mix the butter and flour together.

  4. Add the mixture to the stock to thicken.

  5. Stir in the almond extract.

Serve

  1. Flake the cold boiled halibut and place it in a steamer to heat without drying.

  2. Pour the sauce over the halibut.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Provides the flaked fish that the sauce is served over.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds smooth richness to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when cooked together with the butter.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour mixture to the stock. Flour must be cooked into the hot stock and whisked smooth, otherwise it forms lumps. Cooking the starch in liquid lets it swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, almond, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, almond, 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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