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Sauce Bretonne--britanny Sauce

A creamy sauce made with leeks, celery, mushrooms, truffles, Velouté, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Bretonne--britanny Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Shred the white part of the leeks, celery, and mushrooms into fine julienne.

  2. Smother the vegetables in butter as directed for Julienne Soup.

  3. Moisten with 2 ½ cups of chicken broth and let reduce.

  4. Add 1 quart of Veloute sauce and 1 cup of cream.

  5. Finish with 3 ounces of butter and add 2 shredded truffles.

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. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leeks
Provide a mild onion-like aroma and body as the base vegetable.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture that carries into the reduced sauce.
Chicken broth
Moistens the vegetables and reduces to build savoury depth.
Veloute sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, giving body and a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich flavour and glossy finish when stirred in at the end.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (leek, mushroom, butter, chicken, sauce, cream, truffle):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, mushroom, butter, chicken, sauce, cream, truffle. 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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