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Sauce

Walnut Sauce

A sauce made with flour, cold water, butter, lemon juice, and chopped pickled walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Walnut Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the base

  1. Mix the flour in cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over heat until boiling.

  3. Add the butter and stir until melted.

Finish the sauce

  1. Squeeze in lemon juice to taste.

  2. Chop the pickled walnuts and add them to the sauce.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 water as its starch swells and sets when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy, smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Pickled walnuts
Supply the sharp, savoury flavour and chopped texture that define the sauce.
Lemon juice
Its acidity brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until boiling. Flour added to cold water clumps easily, so stirring keeps it smooth. The starch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil, so the sauce stays thin if it is removed too early.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, walnut. 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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