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Sauce

Supreme Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, chicken stock, hot cream, mushroom liquor, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Supreme Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir to form a smooth paste; cook for one minute without browning.

  3. Gradually add the hot chicken stock while stirring briskly.

  4. Add the hot cream and continue stirring.

  5. Simmer the mushroom liquor until reduced to 2 tablespoons, then add it to the sauce.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Optionally, omit lemon juice and add a few grains of nutmeg.

  3. Whip the sauce until smooth and glossy.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, forming a smooth paste that sets the body.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory flavor.
Hot cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce's flavor and texture.
Mushroom liquor
Adds concentrated earthy mushroom flavor when reduced.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Add the flour and cook without browning. Cooking the flour in butter for one minute cooks out its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Browning would change the color and flavor, and stirring to a smooth paste prevents lumps when the liquid is added.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, flour, mushroom, chicken, pepper):

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, flour, mushroom, chicken, pepper. 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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