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Egrefin a LA Sauce Hollandaise

Egrefin à la Sauce Hollandaise is a fish served with boiled potatoes and a hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Egrefin a LA Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Combine water and milk with a little coarse sea salt in a fish kettle to cover the fish.

  2. Once boiling, add the fish and cook until done.

  3. Boil the potatoes in the same water as the fish, then arrange them around the fish on a serving platter, alternating with parsley.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a heatproof bowl over boiling water, melt the butter with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice, whisking until well combined.

  2. Serve the sauce in a hot sauce boat alongside the fish and potatoes.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Emulsified with lemon juice to form a rich, smooth, pourable sauce that coats the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.
Potatoes
Absorb the poaching liquid and provide a mild, starchy base alongside the fish.

The step that matters

Melting the butter over boiling water. Butter that gets too hot separates into greasy fat and milk solids. Gentle heat from the water bath, with steady whisking, keeps the sauce smooth and combined.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  3. Dillbetter flavor fit
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, fish, potato, parsley, butter, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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