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Sauce

Egg Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, flour, water, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Pat butter into a circular piece and divide it into two equal parts.

  2. Melt one part in a saucepan; add flour mixed with salt and pepper.

  3. Stir to a smooth paste and gradually add boiling water while stirring constantly.

  4. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Beat in the remaining butter in small bits while constantly beating.

  2. Add the egg yolks and continue beating.

  3. Do not allow the sauce to boil after adding the yolks.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the water, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce through their proteins as they set gently with heat.

The step that matters

Do not allow the sauce to boil after adding the yolks. Egg yolk proteins set when heated and can curdle or turn grainy if the sauce boils, so the yolks should be incorporated off direct high heat and kept below boiling.

“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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