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A More Economical Diet Hod of Making a Pint of White Sauce

A simple white sauce made with broth, milk, onion, mace, flour, butter, lemon, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A More Economical Diet Hod of Making a Pint of White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine broth, milk, onion, and mace in a stewpan. Bring to a boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Rub flour and butter together on a plate until smooth.

  3. Add the flour-butter mixture to the stewpan and stir until it boils.

  4. Reduce heat and stir occasionally until the sauce is smooth.

  5. Strain the sauce into a basin, then return it to the stewpan.

Finish and enrich

  1. Season with salt and lemon juice.

  2. Beat egg yolks with 3 tablespoons of milk in a bowl, then strain into the sauce.

  3. Stir well and keep near the heat, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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 liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps make a smooth roux with the flour.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and a richer texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the sauce.
Broth
Adds savory flavor to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce below a boil after adding the egg yolks. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so the sauce must stay hot but not boil once the yolks are stirred in, or it will turn grainy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, flour, butter, lemon, egg. 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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