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Sauce

A Very Good and Useful White Sauce

A thickened sauce made from white sauce, egg yolks, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A Very Good and Useful White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew‑pan, heat 1 quart of white sauce over medium heat, stirring continually until reduced to one-third.

  2. In a bowl, whisk 2 egg yolks, then gradually add the reduced sauce while stirring.

  3. Return the mixture to the stew‑pan and bring to a boil for a few minutes.

  4. Add 1 pint of boiling milk to achieve the desired thickness, which should coat the back of a spoon.

Strain and store

  1. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve into a bowl and stir occasionally until cool.

  2. If not using immediately, store in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to 2‑3 weeks in winter or 1 week in summer.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sauce + milktop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + eggtop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Sauce and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
White sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, and reducing it concentrates its body and flavour.
Milk
Adds liquid to loosen the sauce and bring it to the desired thickness.

The step that matters

Returning the egg yolk mixture to the pan. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but can scramble if the sauce gets too hot too fast. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly so the sauce 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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