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Sauce Supreme

A creamy chicken-based sauce made with broth, wine, herbs, butter, flour, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce Supreme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the chicken.

  2. Place the meat in a saucepan.

  3. Add the sliced onion, parsley, celery, salt, pepper, nutmeg, white wine, leek, and chervil.

  4. Let it simmer for 30 minutes, skimming occasionally.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in another saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the flour.

  3. Strain the broth into the saucepan.

  4. Boil down to half the quantity, stirring occasionally.

  5. Beat the cream with the egg yolk.

  6. Stir the mixture into the sauce.

  7. When scalding hot, remove from heat.

  8. Strain through cheesecloth.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, coating sauce when cooked with the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it body and a velvety texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the broth, balancing the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

When scalding hot, remove from heat.. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and will curdle or scramble if the sauce boils after it is added, so the sauce must be taken off the heat as soon as it is scalding hot.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, onion, parsley, celery, pepper, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, onion, parsley, celery, pepper, white wine. 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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