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Sauce

White Sauce or Allemande

A creamy sauce made with butter, onion, carrot, flour, white stock, egg yolks, lemon juice, and seasoned with salt and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

White Sauce or Allemande

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter with the sliced onion and carrot. Add the flour and stir until combined.

  2. Gradually stir in the boiling white stock and bring to a boil. Let it boil for one hour, then season with salt and white pepper.

  3. Strain the sauce.

Finish and hold

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the lemon juice and stir into the sauce. Keep the sauce hot until ready to use.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Forms the roux with flour and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savory flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add body and a creamy texture when stirred in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce is too hot when they are added. Tempering them with a little warm sauce first and keeping the sauce below a simmer helps it stay smooth and thick.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, flour, white pepper, egg, lemon):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, flour, white pepper, egg, lemon. 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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