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Sauce

Sauce Flamande

A sauce made from egg yolks, lemon juice, nutmeg, vinegar, and butter, cooked gently over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce Flamande

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, lemon juice, nutmeg, vinegar, and butter.

  2. Place the saucepan over low heat and stir continuously.

  3. Do not allow the mixture to boil.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Thicken the sauce as they gently cook and set, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the sauce silky and rich, and helps keep it smooth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk and butter flavour.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and do not let it boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. Too much heat makes them scramble into lumps and the sauce can split or curdle. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps it smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lemon, vinegar, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, vinegar, 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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