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Sauce

Cardinal Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, fish stock, cream, lobster butter, cayenne pepper, sea salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cardinal Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the fish stock, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  5. Whisk in the lobster butter in small pieces.

  6. Add the cream, season with cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

  7. Do not boil after adding the lobster butter.

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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  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
Forms the fat base that the flour cooks into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in butter and combined with the stock.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and thickens with the roux.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Lobster butter
Adds rich lobster flavor and fat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the lobster butter. Lobster butter is fat-based and can separate or turn greasy when overheated, so the sauce should stay warm rather than boil once it is added.

“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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