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Sauce

Flemish Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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.

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

  3. Moisten with cream and consomme.

  4. Stir on the fire until it boils, then keep boiling for 20 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Pass through a tamis into a bain‑marie with blanched carrot, parsley stalks, and horseradish cut into diamonds.

  2. Mix in Tarragon vinegar and gherkins, heat, 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 carries flavour, forming the base with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux, giving body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Consomme
Supplies the main savoury liquid and meaty depth of flavour.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir on the fire until it boils, then keep boiling for 20 minutes. Stirring prevents the flour from scorching on the base of the pan and lumping. A full boil is needed so the starch swells and thickens the sauce fully, and the sustained simmer cooks out the raw floury taste.

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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