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Sauce Blanche

A creamy, lightly seasoned sauce made with butter, flour, water, egg, cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the flour with the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the water while stirring continuously until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and season with salt, nutmeg, mace, and lemon peel.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, add a little water; if too thin, add a mixture of butter and flour.

  5. Stir until smooth, then add lemon juice or vinegar.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and cream together, then stir into the sauce.

  2. For best results, add half the butter at the start and the rest just 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Provides fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in liquid as it heats, giving it body.
Egg
Adds richness and, when gently heated, helps thicken and enrich the sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a softer, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg and cream into the sauce. Egg proteins can scramble if the sauce is too hot when they are added, leaving a grainy texture. Whisking them in gradually and keeping the heat low helps the sauce stay smooth and thick.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, 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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