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Cream Sauce Por Fish

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, anchovy essence, and chili vinegar, served over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Sauce Por Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Knead butter and flour together in a clean saucepan with a strong knife until smooth.

  2. Place the saucepan over gentle heat until the butter melts.

  3. Add salt and cayenne pepper, then simmer for one minute.

  4. Gradually stir in the cream, continuing to stir until it boils.

  5. Mix in the anchovy essence and chili vinegar or lemon juice.

Vary and serve

  1. For a variation, add diced shrimps or lobsters, or minced parsley for a poultry sauce.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Melts with flour to form a smooth base that gives the sauce richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly.
Cream
Provides the main liquid and creamy texture, thickening further as it heats.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a savoury, salty depth that gives the sauce its distinctive flavour.
Chili vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cream. Adding cream slowly while stirring keeps the flour-butter base smooth, so lumps do not form. Stirring until it boils lets the starch thicken the sauce fully.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, vinegar, pepper, shrimp):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, vinegar, pepper, shrimp. 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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