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Sauce

Sauce for Fried or Broiled Carp

A sauce made with white wine, anchovies, onion, citrus peel, gravy, butter, egg yolk, lemon or orange juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sauce for Fried or Broiled Carp

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine white wine, minced anchovies, minced onion, and orange or lemon peel with the gravy.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the butter and melt it.

  3. Stir in the raw egg yolk and let it boil again.

  4. Squeeze in most of the lemon or orange juice and season with salt.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White wine + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

  5. White wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together730 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts into the sauce to add richness and a silky body.
Raw egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Anchovies
Adds deep savory flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Lemon or orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and gravy.

The step that matters

Letting the egg yolk boil. Raw egg yolk thickens as its proteins set with heat, but if the sauce boils too hard or too long after the yolk goes in, the yolk can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat controlled once the yolk is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, orange, meat, butter, egg, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, orange, meat, butter, egg, lemon. 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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