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Sauce

White Sauce

A creamy sauce made with cream, butter, mushroom pickle, salt, white pepper, mace, lemon peel, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream and butter over low heat, stirring until it thickens.

  2. Add mushroom pickle and stir well.

  3. Season with salt and white pepper to taste.

  4. For added flavor, you can include a bit of mace and lemon peel.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Mushroom + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 and gives the sauce its body and smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky, coating mouthfeel.
Mushroom pickle
Adds savoury, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the cream and butter.

The step that matters

Heating the cream and butter gently while stirring. Cream and butter can scorch, separate or turn grainy if overheated. Low heat and constant stirring keep the emulsion smooth and let the sauce thicken evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, mushroom, corn, mace, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, mushroom, corn, mace, lemon. 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.

More white sauce recipes

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