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Sauce

Sauce Veloutee

A velouté sauce made with flour, butter, veal stock, mushroom liquor, cream, bouquet garni, peppercorns, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce Veloutee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the flour and butter together without browning.

  2. Stir in the veal stock and mushroom liquor.

  3. Add the bouquet garni and crushed peppercorns.

  4. Boil slowly for 20 minutes, stirring frequently and skimming as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass the sauce through a sieve before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter into a roux.
Butter
Carries the flour into a roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its body and savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds smoothness and mellows the sauce's texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the roux without browning. Flour and butter must cook gently until they are pale. Browning changes the flavour and colour of the sauce, and a roux that is not cooked enough leaves a raw floury taste.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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