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Veloute Sauce

A rich white sauce made from pale roux, veal stock, salt, nutmeg, white pepper, and optional mushroom trimmings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Veloute Sauce

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veloute Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the roux in the cold veal stock in a saucepan over an open fire.

  2. Stir the sauce with a spatula or whisk to prevent burning.

  3. Add salt, nutmeg, white pepper, and mushroom trimmings if available.

  4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 hours.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain through muslin into a smaller saucepan and add white stock.

  2. Simmer for another 30 minutes, then strain again through a sieve into a wide bowl.

  3. Stir with a spatula until completely cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,988 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pale roux
Thickens the stock into a smooth, velvety sauce by binding its liquid with starch and fat.
White veal stock
Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce its body and savoury flavour.
White mushroom trimmings
Adds earthy aroma and depth to the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Stir while the sauce simmers. Roux-thickened sauces scorch easily on the base of the pan, and constant stirring spreads heat evenly and prevents burnt flavour from spoiling the whole batch.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, mushroom. 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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