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Pike, White Sauce for

A light white sauce made with butter, flour, water, egg yolks, salt, cayenne, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Pike, White Sauce for

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually stir in the water and bring the sauce to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add the beaten egg yolks, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Stir over gentle heat until hot but not boiling.

  3. Add lemon juice if desired and serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the water.
Water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, and thicken the sauce gently when heated.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating when heated. If the sauce is too hot or boils after they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keeping the heat gentle and the sauce just hot, not boiling, keeps it smooth.

“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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