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German Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, egg yolks, white stock, lemon juice, optionally mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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German Sauce

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

German Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt 1½ oz. of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Gradually stir in the white stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Let it cook for 10 minutes.

  5. If using, heat the mushrooms in the sauce before adding to the eggs.

Finish with the yolks

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Pour the boiling sauce onto the yolks, stirring constantly.

  3. Do not let the sauce boil after adding the eggs to prevent curdling.

  4. Add a few drops of lemon juice and the remaining butter, then 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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
Thickens the stock into a smooth, coating sauce when cooked with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, and helps form the roux base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
White stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the yolks to the hot sauce. If the sauce boils after the egg yolks go in, the proteins set too hard and the sauce curdles. Pour the hot sauce onto the yolks slowly while stirring, and keep the heat below boiling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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