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Villeroi Sauce

A mushroom and herb sauce made with butter, flour, broth, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Villeroi Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a roux by melting butter and stirring in flour until it turns yellow.

  2. Stir in the broth and add mushrooms and herbs.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes and strain through a tamis.

Finish

  1. Reduce and thicken by stirring in egg yolks just 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Forms the fat base of the roux that begins the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked with butter into a roux.
Broth
Provides the liquid body and savory flavor of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the sauce boils. Adding them just before serving, off strong heat, keeps the sauce smooth and glossy.

“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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