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White Sauce

A veal and ham white sauce thickened with butter and flour, simmered with aromatics and reduced to a quart.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Add the veal and ham.

  3. Simmer until it begins to catch at the bottom.

  4. Mix in the flour until well combined.

  5. Gradually add the broth or water.

  6. Stir until smooth.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Reduce heat.

Simmer and flavour

  1. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Season with cloves, onion, peppercorns, mace, mushrooms, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

  3. Let the sauce reduce to 1 quart.

  4. Skim off the fat.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain through a fine cloth.

  2. Add 1 pint of cream to the strained sauce.

  3. Stir until thickened.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the veal and ham and adds richness to the sauce.
Veal
Releases gelatin and flavour into the broth during long simmering.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth as it simmers.
Cream (in the method)
Adds richness and body to the strained sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until it begins to catch at the bottom. Stirring is needed when the meat and butter start to stick, because scorched bits at the base of the pan turn bitter and can spread a burnt taste through the whole sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, butter, flour, clove, onion, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, butter, flour, clove, onion, mushroom. 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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