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Sauce Mousseline

A creamy sauce made from butter, flour, broth, egg yolks, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sauce Mousseline

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. In a saucepan, mix butter and flour over low heat, stirring occasionally for 45 minutes without browning.

  2. Gradually stir in boiling broth until the mixture is the consistency of cream.

  3. Boil and stir for a few minutes.

  4. Set aside to settle and skim off any butter on top.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 2 or 3 eggs.

  2. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve back into a clean saucepan.

  3. Bring the strained sauce to a boil.

  4. Gradually beat the hot sauce into the egg yolks.

  5. Add a few drops of lemon juice.

  6. Heat until it just boils, being careful not to let the eggs harden.

  7. Add a lump of fresh butter.

  8. Beat vigorously with an egg beater.

  9. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the broth with butter into a smooth base, giving the sauce body.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce, giving it a rich, velvety texture when gently heated.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies its savory flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Heating after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken at around 160°F and curdle if overheated. Once the hot sauce is beaten into the yolks, heat only until it just boils and keep beating so the eggs thicken smoothly rather than scrambling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, fish, egg. 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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