Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce for Boiled Goose or Ducks

A creamy sauce made with veal broth, mace, cream, flour, butter, and celery, served over boiled goose or ducks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sauce for Boiled Goose or Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine veal broth and mace in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix flour and butter to form a paste.

  3. Add the paste to the boiling broth and stir until thickened.

  4. Pour in the cream and bring to a gentle boil.

  5. Add the chopped celery and cook until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over boiled goose or ducks.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

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

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

Veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, coating sauce when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the flour form a smooth paste.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a softer, silkier texture.
Celery
Contributes a mild, savoury aroma and some vegetable texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream. Once cream is added, the sauce should only gently simmer. Boiling hard can cause the dairy to separate and turn grainy, spoiling the smooth texture.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, flour, butter, celery. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes