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Sauce for Salmon and Other Fish

A creamy sauce made with milk, corn starch, butter, egg, lemon, mace, cayenne, and salmon stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

  1. Heat the milk to a boil.

  2. Mix corn starch with cold water, then stir into the boiling milk.

  3. Add the butter and salmon liquor, stirring until smooth.

  4. Beat the raw egg and add it to the mixture off the heat.

  5. Season with mace and cayenne pepper, then let it stand in hot water for 3 minutes, covered.

  6. Stir in the lemon juice and serve 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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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 starch thickens into a smooth sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a glossy, pourable sauce as it gelatinizes.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture.
Raw egg
Adds body and richness to the sauce when it is gently stirred in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set at high heat and can curdle or scramble in the sauce. Adding the beaten egg off the heat lets it thicken the sauce gently and keep it smooth.

Swap the mace

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

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

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