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Fish in White Sauce

A halibut dish simmered in a butter‑flour white sauce with onion, red pepper, and almond extract, garnished with parsley.

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 in ½ cup of water.

  2. Reduce the stock to ½ cup.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to create a paste.

  4. Thicken the stock with the butter and flour mixture.

  5. Add a drop of almond extract to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Heat the cold boiled halibut in a steamer to prevent drying.

  2. 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Halibut
Provides the main protein; gentle steaming helps it stay moist when reheated.

The step that matters

Thicken the stock with the butter and flour mixture. Flour needs to be cooked into the hot stock so its starch swells and thickens the sauce smoothly. Adding it raw or lumpy leaves a pasty, floury texture.

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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