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Sauce

Royal Sauce for Turkeys and Fowls

A sauce made from cold roast fowl breast, bread, stock, eggs, cream, and optional almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Royal Sauce for Turkeys and Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Remove skin from the breast of the cold roast fowl and pound it to a paste in a mortar.

  2. Add the soaked bread and enough white stock to make a smooth paste with the consistency of mustard.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then simmer the sauce over low heat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Let the sauce cool, then stir in the beaten egg yolks mixed with the heavy cream.

  2. Return the sauce to low heat, but do not allow it to boil after adding the eggs.

  3. If desired, flavor the sauce with the blanched and pounded almonds.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of a cold roast fowl
Provides the main body and meaty flavor of the sauce once pounded into a paste.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce gently as they heat and add richness and a smooth texture.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Bread
Soaked in milk and squeezed, it helps thicken the paste and give it body.

The step that matters

Return the sauce to low heat without boiling after adding the eggs. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heating, but at boiling temperatures they can curdle or scramble, leaving the sauce grainy and separated.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Peasfits about as well
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, pepper, egg, cream. 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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