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Fish in White Sauce

Fish in white sauce is a halibut dish served with a butter‑flour sauce flavored with onion, red pepper, and 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. Flake the cold boiled halibut and place it in a steamer to heat without drying.

  2. In a pot, boil the fish bones and skin with the onion and red pepper in ½ cup of water.

  3. Reduce the stock to ½ cup.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste, then add to the stock to thicken.

  2. Stir in a drop of almond extract.

  3. Pour the sauce over the halibut and 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 main protein and flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when mixed with butter into a paste.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the stock made from the fish bones.

The step that matters

Thickening the stock with the butter and flour paste. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Mixing it first with butter into a paste helps it disperse evenly before the starch swells and thickens the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, coffee, 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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