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Sauce

Lemon Sauce, White, for Boiled Fowls

A white lemon sauce made with cream, butter, flour, and lemon zest for 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

Infuse the cream

  1. Cut the peel of the lemon very thin and add it to the cream with the thyme and peppercorns.

  2. Simmer gently until it tastes well of lemon, then strain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour to thicken the sauce.

  2. Boil the strained cream mixture.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice.

  4. Dish the fowls.

  5. Mix in a little hot white gravy with the cream, but do not boil together.

  6. Add salt to taste.

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 base of the sauce and gives it richness and a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel as it blends into the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the cream.
Lemon peel
Releases fragrant oils into the cream, giving the sauce its lemon aroma.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich cream.
Lemon thyme
Contributes a herbal, citrusy aroma that complements the lemon peel.

The step that matters

Mix in the hot white gravy without boiling. Once the cream and gravy are combined, boiling can make a dairy-based sauce separate or turn grainy, so the mixture should be kept hot but not boiled.

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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