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Sauce

Fish Veloute

A sauce made from egg yolks, white stock, veloute, lemon juice, mushroom liquor, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,633 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fish Veloute

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a thick-bottomed sauté pan, combine egg yolks, cold white stock, veloute, lemon juice, and mushroom liquor.

  2. Place the pan over an open fire and stir the sauce with a metal spatula to prevent burning.

  3. Reduce the sauce until it reaches about 1 quart.

Finish and strain

  1. Add fresh cream and reduce further for a few minutes.

  2. Strain the sauce through a fine strainer into a tureen and stir until completely cool.

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 + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + mushroomtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,987 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Veloute
Provides the base body and flavour that the sauce is built on.
White stock
Adds liquid and savoury flavour to the sauce base.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished sauce.
Mushroom liquor
Adds earthy aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring over the open fire. Egg yolks coagulate and can scramble or curdle if overheated, and the sauce can scorch on the base. Constant stirring with a metal spatula spreads heat evenly and keeps the yolks smooth as the sauce reduces.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mushroom, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mushroom, 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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