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Sauce for Salmon and Other Fish

A creamy sauce made with milk, cornstarch, butter, egg, lemon juice, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce for Salmon and Other Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water to form a slurry, then add it to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the butter and the liquor from the salmon.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat and add the beaten egg, stirring well.

  2. Season with mace and cayenne pepper to taste.

  3. Cover and let it stand in hot water for 3 minutes.

  4. Finally, stir in the lemon juice and serve immediately over the salmon.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened sauce is built on.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, pourable sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Raw egg
Sets gently with the warm sauce, adding body and richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set at about 70°C and can scramble if added to a boiling sauce. Removing the pan from the heat first and stirring well lets the egg thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, lemon, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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