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Sauce

Sauce Normande.

A buttery, lemony sauce made with stock, flour, eggs, and butter, used for sole.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce Normande.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Chop the bones of the soles and cook them in stock or water to make the stock for the sauce.

  2. Cook oysters, mussels, and mushrooms in this stock and strain them out.

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan; add 1 ounce of flour and stir to cook the flour.

  2. Moisten with 1 pint of white stock and the liquor from the soles.

  3. Allow to boil for 10 minutes, skim well, and finish with 2 yolks of eggs.

  4. Stir in 1 ounce of butter bit by bit and add a few drops of lemon juice.

  5. Pass through a fine strainer and use as directed.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter into a roux.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying its savoury flavour.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and richness when finished.
Lemon juice
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Finishing with egg yolks. Yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when they are added, they can scramble and turn grainy. Remove the pan from the heat or keep it barely warm while stirring them in.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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