Why it works: Meat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,529 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
White Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
In a saucepan, combine the white-meat broth and flour.
Place the saucepan on the stove and simmer for 10 minutes.
Modify the sauce with additional flavors as desired.
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.
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Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,529 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- White-meat broth
- Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
- All-purpose flour
- Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the sauce body.
The step that matters
Simmer for 10 minutes. Flour starch only swells and thickens the liquid once it is heated fully. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and can leave raw flour taste. Keep the mixture moving so the flour does not clump.
“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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