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Sauce

Allemande Sauce

A creamy sauce made with stock, milk, egg yolks, cream, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,920 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Allemande Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine chicken or veal stock and milk.

  2. Cook the sauce over medium heat for 10 minutes.

  3. In a bowl, mix the beaten egg yolks with cream.

  4. Stir the egg yolk mixture into the sauce until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add a dash of nutmeg before serving.

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. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, velvety body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavor and helping keep the sauce smooth.
Chicken or veal stock
Provides the savory meaty base that the rest of the sauce is built on.
Milk
Adds mild sweetness and body, rounding out the stock into a creamy liquid.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk mixture into the sauce without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by setting gently with heat. If the sauce boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

“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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