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Sauce

White Sauce for Fish

A simple white sauce made with butter, flour, tomato ketchup, and boiling water, served with boiled or baked fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine boiling water and butter.

  2. Add flour gradually to thicken the mixture to a cream-like consistency.

  3. Stir in the tomato ketchup.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil for a few minutes, then serve with boiled or baked fish.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

  4. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together754 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells in the hot water, giving a creamy body.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add flour gradually. Flour added all at once clumps and forms lumps that do not disperse easily. Adding it in small amounts while stirring lets each portion wet out and thicken the liquid evenly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, ketchup. 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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