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Sauce

Egg Sauce

A sauce made from chicken broth, butter, flour, salt, and chopped hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chicken broth, butter, flour, and salt.

  2. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the chopped hard boiled eggs and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base that the thickened sauce is built on.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce as it heats and starch swells.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and texture as chopped pieces folded into the hot sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while the sauce thickens. Flour needs constant stirring over medium heat so its starch swells evenly; otherwise lumps form and the sauce can scorch on the bottom of the pan.

“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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