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Egg Sauce

A sauce made from chicken broth, butter, flour, eggs, parsley, and boiled egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the chicken broth in a saucepan.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste.

  3. Add the paste to the heated broth and stir until thickened.

  4. Beat the two eggs and pour them into the thickened broth.

  5. Cook for 1 minute, then stir in the parsley.

Finish and serve

  1. Season to taste and pour over the pounded yolks of the boiled eggs in a bowl.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, helps it thicken smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Eggs
Beaten into the hot broth, they add richness and body to the sauce.
Boiled egg yolks
Pounded yolks give the finished sauce a rich, creamy texture and flavor.

The step that matters

Pour the beaten eggs into the thickened broth. If the broth is too hot or stirred too little, the eggs can scramble into lumps instead of blending smoothly into the sauce.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, 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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