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Sauce

Chateaubriand Sauce

A sauce made with Bordelaise sauce, butter, flour, lemon juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chateaubriand Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until smooth.

  3. Add the Bordelaise sauce and mix well.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the lemon juice and minced parsley.

  2. Simmer for five minutes 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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
Adds richness and flavor, and forms the base of the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in butter, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Bordelaise sauce
Provides the main flavor and most of the liquid in the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich, savory flavors.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook until smooth. Cooking the flour in melted butter lets its starch absorb fat and swell evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps and loses any raw, pasty taste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, flour, parsley. 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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