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Allemande Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, stock, mushrooms, egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Allemande Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the flour and fry together without discoloring.

  3. Mix in the white stock and stir until it boils.

  4. Add the sliced mushrooms and boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Stir in the egg yolks mixed with cream and lemon juice.

  6. Heat the sauce until it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain through a clean cloth and serve.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Enriches the roux and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Fine flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
White mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and aroma to the sauce as they simmer.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it gently when heated, adding body and richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks mixed with cream and lemon juice.. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating when heated, so the sauce must stay below boiling after they go in. Boiling can curdle the yolks and leave the sauce grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, veal, mushroom, 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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