Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce for Meat

A creamy sauce made from turnips or Jerusalem artichokes, butter, flour, and cream, served over boiled meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Sauce for Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the turnips or artichokes.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the flour and stir to form a roux.

  2. Gradually whisk in the cream or milk until smooth.

  3. Add the chopped turnips or artichokes and salt.

  4. Heat the mixture until hot, stirring frequently.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over boiled mutton, veal, lamb, or poultry.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Turnips or jerusalem artichokes
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce, with mild sweetness as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux with the butter, giving it a smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually whisk in the cream or milk until smooth. Adding liquid slowly to the roux lets the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, properly thickened sauce.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes