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Sauce

Milk and Egg Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, and optional flavorings for fish or macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Milk and Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the milk and heat while stirring until it thickens slightly.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with the water, then mix it into the sauce, ensuring it does not boil but is very hot.

  4. Add vinegar or lemon juice and grated peel.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer with grated cheese.

  2. Pour the sauce over before baking.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding richness and body when heated gently.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens by setting when heated, so if the sauce boils it can curdle or turn grainy. Keep it below boiling while it heats through and thickens smoothly.

“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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