Skip to main content
Main

White, for Boiled Fowls

A white sauce made with milk, butter, flour, egg yolk, cream, wine, mint, currant jelly, and optional parsley for boiled fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,198 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White, for Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Knead the flour into the melted butter.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with the cream and stir it into the mixture.

  4. Heat over low heat, stirring constantly.

  5. Add chopped parsley for flavor if desired.

Make the mint sauce and serve

  1. In another saucepan, combine the wine, mint, and currant jelly.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil and serve in a sauceboat.

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 + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that thickens as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with the flour to help thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid when heated with the butter.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce as it gently heats.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the wine and mint sauce.

The step that matters

Heat over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if the sauce gets too hot, and flour can clump if it is not kept moving. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, egg, cream, port wine, mint):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, egg, cream, port wine, mint. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes