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Sauce

White Sauce

A creamy mushroom sauce made with milk, butter, cream, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the milk

  1. Combine the milk, mushrooms, onion, carrot, sweet herbs, whole pepper, salt, cloves, and mace in a saucepan.

  2. Gently simmer for about 1 hour.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the butter and stir over heat until the sauce thickens.

  2. Finish by stirring in the cream.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that slowly takes up flavour from the vegetables and herbs.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy, savoury depth to the infused milk.
Onion
Releases sweet, aromatic flavour during the long, gentle simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel as the sauce is finished over heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Gently simmer for about 1 hour. Milk scorches on the bottom of the pan and can boil over if the heat is too high. A gentle simmer lets the mushrooms, onion, carrot and spices release their flavour slowly into the milk without burning or curdling it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, mushroom, onion, carrot, pepper, clove, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, mushroom, onion, carrot, pepper, clove, butter. 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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