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Plain Sauce for Boiled Fish

A sauce of boiling water, corn starch, butter, parsley, anchovy sauce or ketchup, lemon juice, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper, served over boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Sauce for Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix corn starch with a little cold water until smooth.

  2. Stir the corn starch mixture into the boiling water.

  3. Cook over heat, stirring until thickened.

  4. Add salt, cayenne pepper, butter, and parsley; mix well.

  5. Stir in lemon juice and ketchup, and boil for a few minutes.

  6. Add beaten egg yolks and stir for 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the boiled fish and serve.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  5. Corn + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinises.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Beaten egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and a silky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble and curdle if the sauce is too hot or boiling. Stir gently over low heat and keep the sauce below a simmer once they go in.

“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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