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Sauce

Chateaubriand Sauce

A sauce made from Bordelaise sauce thickened with butter and flour, brightened with lemon juice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chateaubriand Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until smooth.

  3. Add the Bordelaise sauce and mix well.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and minced parsley.

  5. Simmer for five minutes 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Bordelaise sauce
Provides the main flavor base and body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and forms the base for the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the melted butter into a smooth paste.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory flavors of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour into the butter until smooth. Cooking flour in melted butter until smooth forms a roux, which thickens the sauce evenly and removes the raw starchy taste. Adding flour without cooking it, or stirring too little, can leave lumps and a floury flavor.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, flour, parsley. 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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