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Warmed Up Boiled Fish, with Dutch Sauce

A boiled fish served warm with a sauce made from butter, flour, water, egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Warmed Up Boiled Fish, with Dutch Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Place the cold fish in a pot with plenty of cold water and salt.

  2. Heat the pot slowly until the water comes to a boil.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour over medium heat, stirring constantly until it bubbles.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks one at a time.

  4. Add the dry mustard, vinegar, and oil drop by drop, stirring constantly until smooth.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the warmed fish without breaking it and serve with the Dutch sauce.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 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 + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with the warm base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water base into a smooth sauce.
Oil
Adds fat and body, helping the emulsified sauce stay smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil added too fast can separate from the egg yolks and sauce base, leaving it greasy and broken instead of smooth. Slow addition with constant stirring lets the mixture emulsify and hold together.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, egg, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, egg, vinegar. 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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