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Sauce

Sauce Blanche

A creamy white sauce made with butter, flour, water, spices, lemon, egg, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the butter until smooth.

  2. Add the water and transfer to a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and season with salt, nutmeg, mace, and lemon peel.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more water; if too thin, mix in more butter and flour until smooth.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice or vinegar.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the egg and cream, stirring quickly to combine.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides richness and smooth body to the sauce as it melts into the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid and swelling when heated with butter and water.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and thickens it gently when stirred in at the end.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the sauce a softer, richer texture.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of butter and egg.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and cream. Egg proteins can scramble if the sauce is too hot or added too early, so it should be added just before serving while stirring quickly to keep it smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, egg, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, egg, cream. 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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