A Simple Sauce for Steamed or Boiled Fish

A chopped-egg butter sauce of the plainest sort, and one that lives or dies on temperature: the butter and the eggs must both be hot when they meet the fish, or the sauce sets into cold specks on the plate.

• "Melted butter" is ambiguous hereIn British and Anglo-American cookery of this era, melted butter could mean a thin white sauce of butter, flour and water or milk rather than simply butter warmed in a pan. Read as plain butter, three tablespoons will barely coat a fillet; read as the thickened sauce, it goes considerably further. Either reading works, but decide before you start.
• Quantity and yieldThree tablespoons of butter with three eggs is a stiff, almost salad-like mixture — enough for two to three servings. If you want a pouring sauce for a two-pound fish, build a cup of butter sauce and fold the eggs into that.
• The eggsHard-boil so the yolks are just set and still bright, about nine minutes from boiling for large eggs, then cool at once. Overcooked yolks go grey and chalky and will taste dusty against a delicate fish.
• Chop, do not minceThe point of the sauce is texture. Chop the eggs coarsely, a quarter-inch or so, so the whites stay distinct in the butter.
• Warm the eggs through"Have it very hot" is the hinge. Cold chopped egg dropped into hot butter chills it immediately. Add the eggs to the warm butter off direct heat and hold the pan over hot water for a minute or two until the whole is steaming.
• SeasoningHalf a teaspoon of salt is a fair amount for this quantity; cut it back if the butter is salted or the fish was boiled in salted or court-bouillon liquid.
• ServingSpoon it over at the table rather than in the kitchen — it thickens and dulls as it stands. A squeeze of lemon at the last moment is not in the original but is entirely in keeping.