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Sauce

A Sauce for Either Baked or Boiled Fish

A savoury sauce of browned onion, catsup, oil, butter, mustard and chopped cucumber pickles, served with baked or boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Sauce for Either Baked or Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the onion very finely and sprinkle with a little browned flour.

  2. Fry the onion until well browned.

  3. Mix the browned onion and catsup together and boil for five minutes.

  4. Stir in the olive oil, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  5. Add the finely chopped cucumber pickles.

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 + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Walnut + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Olive + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browns and builds the savory, sweet base flavor of the sauce when fried.
Walnut or mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savory, umami depth to the sauce after boiling.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the sauce a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, rich flavor to the sauce.
Cucumber pickles
Contributes tangy acidity and crisp texture to balance the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the onion until well browned. Browning the onion develops deep flavor through the Maillard reaction and caramelization. Stopping early leaves the sauce pale and raw-tasting, while over-darkening brings bitterness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, walnut, butter, olive, cucumber, pepper):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, walnut, butter, olive, cucumber, pepper. 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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