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Sauce

Milk and Egg Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, milk, and egg yolk, optionally flavored with vinegar, lemon, parsley, oysters, or breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Milk and Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the milk and heat while stirring until it thickens slightly.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with water and mix it into the sauce, ensuring it does not boil.

Finish for the dish

  1. For fish, add vinegar or lemon juice and grated lemon peel.

  2. For boiled fowls, stir in chopped oysters.

  3. For macaroni, layer with grated cheese and pour the sauce over before baking.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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
Melted fat that forms the base of the roux and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Milk
Liquid that the flour thickens, forming the body of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and further thickens the sauce as it gently sets with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk without boiling. Egg yolk proteins set and can curdle or scramble if the sauce boils, leaving a grainy texture. Keeping the heat gentle keeps the sauce 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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