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Lemon Sauce, White

A white lemon sauce made with cream, lemon zest, pepper, thyme, butter, flour, and stock, served with fowls or fricassees.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce, White

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the cream

  1. Combine the cream, lemon peel, pepper, and thyme in a clean saucepan.

  2. Let the mixture infuse for 30 minutes.

  3. Simmer gently for a few minutes until the lemon flavor is nice.

Thicken and finish

  1. Strain the mixture and add a thickening of butter and flour, stirring well.

  2. Mix the stock with the cream and add a little salt.

  3. Do not boil after mixing.

  4. Add the lemon juice just before serving.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Cream
Forms the rich body of the sauce and carries the lemon and pepper flavours.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
White stock
Adds savoury depth and extra liquid to the sauce.
Lemon
Provides the bright acidity and aroma that define the sauce.

The step that matters

Do not boil after mixing. Boiling a cream sauce thickened with flour can cause it to break or separate and turn grainy, and it can dull the fresh lemon flavour. Keep it at a gentle heat once the stock and cream are combined.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, thyme, butter, flour. 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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