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Sauce Allemande

Sauce Allemande is a creamy sauce made with butter, flour, chicken stock, egg yolks, cream, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce Allemande

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt 1 ½ ounces of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 ounce of flour and stir for a few minutes without browning.

Simmer the sauce

  1. Pour in the chicken stock and stir until it boils.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and grated nutmeg, then let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Skim the sauce and add 2 egg yolks, 1 tablespoon of cream, and ½ ounce of fresh butter.

Finish and strain

  1. Stir over low heat until the eggs begin to set, but do not let it boil.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and strain through a fine strainer.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux and adds richness to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as the starch in the roux swells in the hot stock.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, carrying its savory flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently with the heat.
Cream
Adds smoothness and richness, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until the eggs begin to set, but do not let it boil.. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but if the sauce boils they can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy and thin rather than smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken, pepper, nutmeg, 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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