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Sauce

White Sauce for Fowls

A creamy sauce made with cream, flour, butter, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, oyster and cucumber catsup, thickened over medium heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Sauce for Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream, flour, and butter to thicken.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg and cayenne pepper.

  3. Stir in the oyster and cucumber catsup.

  4. Cook over medium heat until the sauce thickens.

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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + cucumbertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Nutmeg + cucumbertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together432 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a smooth, rich sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the heated liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and helps the flour blend evenly.
Oyster catsup
Contributes savoury, salty depth to the sauce.
Cucumber catsup
Adds tangy, savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until the sauce thickens. Flour needs to be heated long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the cream. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and possibly with a raw floury taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, butter, nutmeg, pepper, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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