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Sauce for Boiled Fish

A fragrant sauce made from boiled herbs, veal stock, butter, nutmeg, lemon, cayenne, and salt, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce for Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Pick and wash the fennel, parsley, mint, thyme, and green onions.

  2. Boil the herbs in veal stock until tender.

  3. Chop the boiled herbs.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the chopped herbs with fresh butter, the cooking liquid, nutmeg, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  4. Serve in a sauce boat.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Fennel + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together337 recipes

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

  3. Fennel + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Fennel + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce that coats the fish.
Veal stock
Provides savory body and the liquid in which the herbs are cooked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and herbs.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be cooked through after it is added, or the sauce tastes pasty and floury. Keep it at a gentle simmer and stir well so it does not lump.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fennel, parsley, thyme, onion, veal, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fennel, parsley, thyme, onion, veal, butter, nutmeg. 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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