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White Sauce

A creamy sauce made with milk, mushrooms, onion, carrot, herbs, spices, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 1 pint of milk, 2 or 3 mushrooms, 1 chopped onion, 1 chopped carrot, and 1 bundle of sweet herbs in a saucepan. Add whole pepper, salt, a few cloves, and a little mace.

  2. Simmer gently for about an hour.

  3. Stir in 1 oz. of butter and cook until the sauce thickens.

  4. Finish by stirring in ½ cup of cream.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flavourings infuse into and that thickens into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce as it cooks down.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture at the finish.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour to the milk as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmering gently. Milk scorches and can curdle if it boils hard or sits on direct heat too long. A gentle simmer lets the flavours infuse while keeping the liquid smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, mushroom, onion, carrot, pepper, clove, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, mushroom, onion, carrot, pepper, clove, butter. 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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