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Allemande Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, stock, egg yolks, and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Allemande Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Add the white stock or broth and stir constantly until it boils.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks carefully to avoid cooking them.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Return to heat, stirring constantly, and bring to a boil, then remove immediately to prevent curdling.

  7. Add the egg-sized piece of butter and stir until melted.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Butter
Enriches the roux and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
White stock or broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and provides savoury flavour.
Egg yolks
Add richness and thicken the sauce gently as it warms.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks begin to set around 65°C and can scramble if added to a boiling sauce. Stirring them in off the heat, then reheating gently and stirring constantly, keeps the sauce smooth rather than curdled.

“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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