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Sauce

Blond— Veloute— White Sauce

A light white sauce made from veal shank, chicken broth, celery, and soup vegetables, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Blond— Veloute— White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, combine the broth from boiled chickens, shank of veal, celery, and other soup vegetables.

  2. Boil down the mixture until it is condensed and rich.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the sauce with a mixture of flour and butter, but do not brown it.

  2. Strain the sauce, then simmer and skim off any impurities.

  3. If the sauce is too thick, add boiling cream to restore its consistency.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 sauce as it cooks with butter, giving it body.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Broth from boiled chickens
Forms the flavorful liquid base of the sauce.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and loosens the sauce when it becomes too thick.

The step that matters

Thicken without browning the roux. Cooking flour and butter past a pale blond stage darkens the color and gives a toasted flavor, which spoils the delicate look of a blond velouté. Keeping the roux pale preserves both color and taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

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

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Capersabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Garlicabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, flour, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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