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Sauce

Brown Sauce for Baked Fish

A brown sauce made with butter, flour, onion, ketchup, and port wine, served over baked fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Brown Sauce for Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and chopped onion, frying until browned.

  3. Slowly stir in the ketchup and port wine.

  4. Remove from heat and serve over 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. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ketchup + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together425 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps it brown as it fries in the butter.
Butter
Provides fat for frying the flour and onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds tomato sweetness and acidity, giving the sauce its colour and tang.

The step that matters

Frying the flour until browned. Browning the flour in butter develops nutty, toasted flavour and colour. If it is pulled too early the sauce tastes raw and pale; if it burns, it turns bitter. Keep the heat moderate and stir often.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, ketchup, port wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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