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Sauce

White Sauce for Fowls

A creamy sauce thickened with flour and butter, flavored with nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and catsup, 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 cream with the flour and butter to thicken it.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg and cayenne pepper.

  3. Stir in the oyster or cucumber catsup.

  4. Cook over medium heat until the sauce thickens.

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

Cream
Provides the liquid base and richness that the sauce is built on.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for silky texture and a rich flavor to the sauce.
Oyster or cucumber catsup
Adds savory, tangy depth that seasons the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Flour needs to be heated long enough to swell and gelatinize its starch, which thickens the sauce. Heating too fast can scorch the cream or cause lumps, so keep the heat moderate and stir.

“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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