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Lemon White Sauce for Boiled Fowls

A lemon-infused white sauce made with cream, butter, and flour, served over boiled fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon White Sauce for Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infused cream

  1. Add the lemon peel, lemon thyme, and white peppercorns to the cream.

  2. Simmer gently until the mixture tastes of lemon.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Finish the sauce

  1. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour.

  2. Boil the sauce briefly.

  3. Stir in the strained lemon juice.

  4. Add salt to taste.

Serve with the chickens

  1. Dish the boiled chickens.

  2. Add the hot white gravy to the boiled chickens, but do not boil together.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 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. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Sweet rich cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter into a smooth roux.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cream and balances its richness.
Lemon peel
Releases aromatic oils into the cream, giving a fresh lemon aroma.

The step that matters

Add the hot white gravy to the boiled chickens, but do not boil together. Once the acidic lemon juice and thickened cream are combined, boiling can cause the sauce to curdle or separate and the thickening to break down. Keeping the sauce hot but not boiling preserves a smooth texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, thyme, butter, flour. 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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