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A More Economical Method of Making a Pint of White Sauce

A creamy white sauce made from broth, milk, onion, mace, flour, butter, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

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 Method of Making a Pint of White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine broth, milk, onion, and mace in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix flour and butter in a bowl until well combined.

  4. Add the flour‑butter mixture to the saucepan and stir until it boils.

  5. Reduce heat and stir occasionally until smooth.

  6. Strain the sauce through a sieve into a basin.

Finish the sauce

  1. Return the sauce to the saucepan, season with salt and lemon juice.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with 3 tablespoons of milk and strain into the sauce.

  3. Stir the sauce well.

  4. Keep the sauce warm without boiling 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 and heated.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour so it blends smoothly into the liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in, adding body and richness.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the flour thickens.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce warm without boiling. Once the egg yolks are added, boiling can scramble them and cause curdling. Gentle warmth thickens the sauce smoothly while keeping it silky.

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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