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Sauce

Drawn Buttbb

A sauce made by whisking butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, pepper, and salt in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Ladies' Benevolent Society, First Congregational Church (Fall River, Mass .). Ladies' Benevolent Society, Mass.) First Congregational Church (Fall River · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Drawn Buttbb

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Rub together two tablespoonfuls of flour and a half cup of butter until smooth.

  2. Pour one pint of boiling water over the mixture.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Break into the mixture one or two raw eggs, letting the whites cook into pieces and breaking the yolks while still soft.

  5. Boil for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat butter into a cream.

  2. Add yolks one by one.

  3. Add lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  4. Place the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water.

  5. Beat with an egg beater until it begins to thicken (about a minute).

  6. Add boiling water; stir all the time.

  7. When it is like a soft custard, it is done.

  8. Pour around meat or fish.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

704Calories
20 gProtein
24 gFat
101 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Ladies' Benevolent Society, First Congregational Church (Fall River, Mass .). Ladies' Benevolent Society, Mass.) First Congregational Church (Fall River. 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. See the original page.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 so it becomes smooth and coats the spoon.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a rounded, smooth mouthfeel.
Eggs
Set with gentle heat to thicken the sauce into a soft custard texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavor.

The step that matters

Thickening the eggs over gentle heat. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures. If the sauce gets too hot or is boiled hard, the eggs can curdle and turn grainy, so keep the heat gentle and stir constantly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, cream, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, cream, pepper. 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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