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Sauce

White Hash-Sauce, for Veal Roasted or Minced, or for Fowls

A clear, white sauce made from veal bones, onion, lemon, and spices, thickened with flour or starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Hash-Sauce, for Veal Roasted or Minced, or for Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the bones, gristles, and white trimmings in clear, weak broth or water with the onion and lemon peel.

  2. Add salt, mace, and white peppercorns.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour or potato starch rolled in butter until smooth.

  4. Let it settle, then strain the sauce.

Season and finish

  1. Add a squeeze of lemon and grated lemon zest for seasoning.

  2. For fowls, add more mace and less acid, and optionally stir in cream.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour or potato starch
Thickens the gravy so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the spoon.
Butter
Rolled with the flour or starch, it coats the thickener so it blends without lumps.
Juice of 1 lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the sauce's flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour or potato starch rolled in butter until smooth. Starch needs to be fully dispersed and heated to thicken. Added loose, it clumps and leaves lumps, so coating it in butter first helps it blend evenly into the liquid.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, mace, flour, butter, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, mace, flour, butter, 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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