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Sauce

Allemande Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, cream, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Allemande Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Boil for two minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream and the egg yolks.

  2. Cook for one more moment.

  3. Add the lemon juice 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 that carries flavor and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as their proteins set when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cooking gently. Egg yolk proteins thicken the sauce by setting when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot or cooks too long after the yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly once the yolks are added.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream, egg. 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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