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Sauce

Veloute Sauce

A smooth sauce made from butter, flour, white stock, seasoned with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

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

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Veloute Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour smoothly.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the white stock and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Cook gently for 10 minutes, skimming carefully.

  3. Strain through a fine cloth.

Finish

  1. Before serving, add the lemon juice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Carries flavour and richness, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot stock.
White stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 10 minutes, skimming carefully. Flour starch thickens fully only when heated in liquid, but a hard boil can scorch the bottom, break the texture, and leave a skin or lumps to skim off. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and clean.

“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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