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Sauce

White Sauce for Fowls

A creamy sauce made with cream, flour, butter, nutmeg, cayenne, and oyster or cucumber sauce, used for fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Sauce for Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the flour and butter to form a paste.

  2. Add the cream and stir over medium heat until thickened.

  3. Mix in the grated nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and oyster or cucumber sauce.

  4. Continue stirring until the sauce is smooth and heated through.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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 cream into a smooth sauce by swelling and setting when heated.
Butter
Combines with the flour to form a roux, adding richness and helping the sauce thicken smoothly.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and, once thickened, gives it a rich, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream to the roux. Cream added to a flour and butter paste can lump if poured in too fast or left unstirred. Constant stirring over medium heat lets the starch hydrate evenly and the sauce thicken smoothly.

“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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