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Sauce

Sauces

A simple sauce made from butter or dripping, flour, and boiling liquid, seasoned with salt and optional ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in a small saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until absorbed; adjust with more fat or flour as needed.

  3. For white sauce, let it sit by the fire for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Pour in the boiling liquid and stir continuously until it boils.

  5. Season to taste and add any desired accompaniments.

  6. For brown sauce, let the flour and fat brown before adding the boiling liquid.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Walnut + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter or sweet dripping
Provides the fat that coats the flour and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in fat and then mixed with hot liquid.
Milk or stock
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens, giving the sauce its body and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir continuously once the boiling liquid goes in. Flour granules can clump when hot liquid meets them. Constant stirring disperses them and lets the starch swell evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, flour, milk, parsley, anchovy):

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, flour, milk, parsley, anchovy. 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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