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Sauce

To Make White Sauce for Fowls

A creamy sauce made with water, mace, peppercorns, anchovy, celery, herbs, lemon, butter, flour, pickled mushrooms, egg yolks, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Make White Sauce for Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine water, mace, peppercorns, anchovy, celery, sweet herbs, and lemon slice in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and boil until reduced to half a pint.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the pan.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix butter with flour and add the mixture to the strained liquid.

  2. Boil for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Stir in pickled mushrooms, egg yolks, and nutmeg.

  4. Keep warm but do not boil.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Celery + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,006 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and a rich texture.

The step that matters

Keep warm but do not boil. Once egg yolks are stirred in, boiling can curdle them and make the sauce grainy, so it should be kept warm instead.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, celery, lemon, butter, flour, mushroom, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, celery, lemon, butter, flour, mushroom, egg. 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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