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Sauce

Brown Sauce

A thickened cream sauce made with browned flour and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Brown Sauce

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, mix the browned flour with a little cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  3. Add the flour paste to the boiling cream and stir constantly until thickened.

  4. Reduce heat and cook in a double boiler for 5 to 10 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Thin cream
Provides the liquid base and richness that the thickened sauce is built on.
Browned flour
Thickens the cream and adds a toasted, nutty flavour and colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste to the boiling cream. Flour must be fully dispersed in a smooth paste before it meets hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Constant stirring spreads the starch evenly so it thickens smoothly as it heats.

“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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