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Flemish Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, onion, parsley, carrot, thyme, mace, pepper, cream, consomme, tarragon vinegar, gherkins, carrot, horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Flemish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Knead the butter and flour together in a bowl.

  2. Add the onion, parsley, shredded carrot, thyme, mace, and mignonette pepper.

  3. Moisten the mixture with cream and consomme.

  4. Stir the sauce over heat until it boils, then keep boiling for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve into a bain-marie with the blanched carrot, parsley, and horseradish cut into small diamonds.

  2. Mix in the tarragon vinegar and shredded gherkins.

  3. Heat the sauce and serve.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by binding with the melted butter and liquid as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Consomme
Supplies the main liquid and savoury meaty flavour of the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and stock flavours.

The step that matters

Boiling for 20 minutes. Once the flour is in, the sauce must boil long enough for the starch to swell and cook fully, which removes raw floury taste and sets the thickness. Stirring keeps it from scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, parsley, carrot, thyme, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, parsley, carrot, thyme, pepper. 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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