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Sauce

Sauce for Baked Pike

A sauce made with tarragon vinegar, butter sauce, espagnole glaze, and lemon juice for baked pike.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce for Baked Pike

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat 4 tablespoons of tarragon vinegar in a saucepan until reduced to 2 tablespoons.

  2. Add ½ pint of butter sauce and a good amount of espagnole glaze for color and strength.

  3. Heat the mixture thoroughly, then squeeze in the juice of ½ lemon.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce around the baked pike.

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. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Tarragon + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Tarragon vinegar
Reduced by heating to concentrate its sharp, aromatic flavor into the sauce base.
Butter sauce
Provides the rich, fatty body that makes up most of the sauce.
Espagnole glaze
Adds color and savory depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and brown sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, vinegar, butter, sauce):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, butter, sauce. 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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