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Flemish Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, onion, parsley, carrot, thyme, mace, pepper, cream, consomme, vinegar, gherkins, carrot, parsley, horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Flemish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Knead the butter and flour together in a bowl.

  2. Add the onion, parsley, shredded carrot, thyme, mace, and mignonette pepper.

  3. Moisten the mixture with cream and consomme.

  4. Stir the sauce over heat until it boils, then keep boiling for 20 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Pass the sauce through a tammy into a bain-marie with the prepared carrot, parsley, and horseradish.

  2. Mix in the tarragon vinegar and gherkins, heat the sauce, and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid when cooked with the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.
Consomme
Provides the main liquid and savoury flavour base for the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over heat until it boils. The flour must be fully heated while stirring so it thickens smoothly without lumps and loses its raw starchy taste. Stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed as the liquid thickens.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, parsley, carrot, thyme, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, parsley, carrot, thyme, pepper. 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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