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Sauce

White Gravy-sauce, the French Veloute, or White Cullis

A white gravy sauce made from veal, ham, beef, and vegetables, thickened with roux blanche or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

White Gravy-sauce, the French Veloute, or White Cullis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a well-tinned stewpan, combine the veal, ham, beef, and any trimmings from game or poultry.

  2. Moisten with broth and add the carrots, onions, parsley, thyme, and mushrooms.

Cook the base

  1. Let the meat sweat without browning, pricking it to release juices.

  2. Once the knuckle is cooked, skim the sauce and strain it through a fine sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. Boil the sauce until reduced, then add enough roux blanche or cream to achieve a thick consistency.

  2. Skim the sauce again and boil while stirring, lifting it with a spoon to make it smooth.

  3. Continue this process until the sauce cools.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Provides rich gelatin and meaty flavour that give the finished sauce body.
Beef
Adds savoury depth to the broth that forms the base of the sauce.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky flavour to the stock.
White thickening (roux blanche)
Thickens the sauce to a smooth, coating consistency through starch gelatinisation.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they slowly soften in the stock.

The step that matters

Skimming and stirring while thickening. Skimming removes fat and impurities that would make the sauce greasy or cloudy, and constant stirring prevents the starch from clumping, keeping the velouté smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, beef, carrot, parsley, thyme, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, beef, carrot, parsley, thyme, 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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