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White Sauce for Poultry

A creamy sauce made with cream, flour, mace, nutmeg, salt, and chicken broth, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

White Sauce for Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream and flour until very smooth.

  2. Add the ground mace, nutmeg, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Stir in the reserved chicken broth.

  4. Heat the mixture on the stove, stirring constantly until it boils.

  5. Cook until the sauce is very thick and smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the boiled poultry.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body and a smooth, thick texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Reserved chicken broth
Supplies liquid and savory flavor that the flour thickens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while the sauce heats to a boil. Flour can clump and scorch on the bottom of the pan if the mixture is not stirred constantly. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce heats evenly and turns smooth and thick.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, nutmeg, chicken):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, nutmeg, chicken. 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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