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Sauce

Sauce Allemande

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, stock, herbs, and sherry, finished with cream, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce Allemande

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add the stock, pepper, salt, garlic, bay leaves, cloves, and thyme.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, then strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour in the cream and sherry, and boil for another 15 minutes.

  2. Add the lemon juice and 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. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Combines with the butter to form a roux that thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savory flavor.
Cream
Adds body and a smooth, rich texture to the finished sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the cream and sherry. Boiling for the full 15 minutes after adding cream can cause it to reduce and separate or scorch on the bottom, so keep the heat controlled and stir as it simmers.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, clove, thyme, cream, pepper, sherry):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove, thyme, cream, pepper, sherry. 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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