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Allemande Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, chicken stock, egg yolks, cream, fresh butter, lemon juice, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Allemande Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the velouté

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir for a few minutes without browning, just enough to cook the flour.

  3. Pour in the chicken stock and stir until it boils.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then let it simmer for at least 20 minutes.

  5. Skim the sauce well.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks, cream, and fresh butter.

  2. Stir this mixture over low heat until the eggs begin to set, but do not let it boil.

  3. Add the lemon juice, strain the sauce, and serve as needed.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and rich flavour while carrying the flour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the fat.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, supplying most of its savoury flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the finished sauce as they gently set over heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk mixture over low heat. Egg yolks begin to set around 65 to 70°C and curdle if they boil. Gentle heat and constant stirring thicken the sauce smoothly without scrambling the eggs.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, chicken, pepper, nutmeg, egg, cream):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken, pepper, nutmeg, egg, cream. 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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