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Sauce

Villeroy Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, broth, mushrooms, herbs, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Villeroy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix equal parts butter and flour in a saucepan over heat until browned.

  2. Stir in the broth, mushrooms, and herbs; simmer for 15 minutes.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain through a fine sieve and reduce the sauce.

  2. Thicken with beaten egg yolks and cream over low heat without boiling.

  3. Serve when thickened.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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
Carries flavor and, when browned, adds a nutty aroma to the base.
Flour
Combines with the butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Meat or fish broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the roux thickens.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat and add richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks set at low temperatures. If the sauce boils, the proteins tighten and scramble, leaving a grainy or curdled texture instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, meat, mushroom, egg, onion, ham. 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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