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Sauce

Croquette Sauce

A creamy sauce made with milk, cream, butter, flour, spices, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Croquette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk and cream in a double boiler.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour.

  3. Add the butter and flour mixture to the boiling milk, stirring constantly.

  4. Continue stirring until the sauce thickens to the consistency of heavy cream.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the chopped parsley.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and milk.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flour so it blends smoothly into the liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture to the milk. Stirring constantly as the mixture goes into the hot liquid keeps the flour dispersed. If it is left to sit, lumps can form that are hard to smooth out.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, butter, flour, celery, parsley):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, butter, flour, celery, parsley. 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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