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Sauce

English White Sauce

A light sauce made from veal gravy, lemon rind, arrowroot or flour, butter, cream, salt, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

English White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. In a saucepan, boil the veal gravy gently with the lemon rind for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Stir in the arrowroot (or flour) mixed with butter to thicken the sauce.

  3. Add salt if needed, then mix in the boiling cream.

  4. Season with freshly ground mace to taste.

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 + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal gravy
Forms the savoury base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the lemon rind.
Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the thickened sauce.
Cream
Adds body and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the arrowroot or flour. Starch thickens only when heated in liquid, and clumps form if it is added straight to hot liquid without being mixed with fat or cold liquid first. Mixing it with butter first, then stirring steadily, helps it disperse evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, arrowroot, butter, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, arrowroot, butter, 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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