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Sauce Blanche

A creamy white sauce made with butter, flour, water, salt, nutmeg, mace, lemon peel, lemon juice or vinegar, egg yolk, and cream.

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

  1. In a saucepan, mix the flour with ½ cup of water and ¼ pound of butter over medium heat, stirring constantly.

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

  3. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more water.

  4. If the sauce is too thin, mix in some butter with flour until smooth.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice or vinegar.

  6. Add the egg yolk and cream.

  7. Mix half the butter with the flour.

  8. Add the remaining butter just before serving, stirring quickly.

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
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells with heat and water.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken and emulsify the sauce as it gently heats.
Cream
Adds fat and body, making the sauce richer and silkier.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk and cream. The yolk can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Keep the heat low and stir steadily so the yolk thickens the sauce smoothly instead of curdling.

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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