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Sauce

Champagne Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, stock, champagne, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Champagne Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until it turns dark brown.

  3. Gradually add the stock, stirring until smooth.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the champagne or wine.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + champagnetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Champagne + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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
Carries the flour and adds richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid, and browning adds nutty flavor.
Stock
Forms the main liquid of the sauce and supplies most of its savory body.
Champagne or white wine
Adds acidity and a bright aroma that balances the richness of the butter and stock.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until dark brown. Flour browns quickly and can go from brown to burnt in moments. Burnt starch turns bitter and loses thickening power, so the color should be watched closely as it darkens.

“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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