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Sauce Imperatrice

A simple sauce made from flour, salt, pepper, vinegar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce Imperatrice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix flour with a little water, adding salt, pepper, and vinegar.

  2. Heat the mixture until well combined, then add butter in small pieces.

  3. Beat well while incorporating each piece of butter before adding the next.

Hold the sauce

  1. Keep the sauce warm, ensuring it never boils.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the sauce its body and structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and when beaten in gradually it gives a smooth, glossy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce from boiling. Once butter is added, a flour-thickened butter sauce can split if it boils or if the butter goes in too fast. Beating each piece in fully before adding the next keeps the emulsion stable and the texture 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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