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Lemon Sauce, White, for Boiled Fowls

A white sauce of cream flavored with lemon peel, lemon thyme and peppercorns, thickened with butter and flour, served with boiled fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce, White, for Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon cream

  1. Cut the peel of the lemon very thin.

  2. Add the lemon peel to the cream with lemon thyme and peppercorns.

  3. Simmer gently until the cream tastes of lemon.

  4. Strain the cream.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the strained cream with butter mixed with flour.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the strained lemon juice and mix well.

  4. Add salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the fowls and combine with hot white gravy, but do not boil together.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Sweet rich cream
Forms the body of the sauce and carries the lemon and herb flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the strained cream with the butter so the sauce coats the fowl.
Lemon peel
Provides aromatic lemon oils that flavour the cream as it simmers.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil after thickening. Once flour and butter thicken the cream, the mixture can curdle or break if overheated, and the lemon juice is added afterward so its acid does not split the cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, thyme, butter, flour. 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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