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Sauce

Excellent Sauce for Fowls or Turkeys

A creamy sauce made with salt, mace, butter, cream, and egg yolks, served with fowl or turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Excellent Sauce for Fowls or Turkeys

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew-pan, combine salt, mace, and butter.

  2. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Add cream and beaten egg yolks, stirring continuously until it boils.

Serve

  1. Pour into a serving dish and serve with the head.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  4. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Provides body and moisture, giving the sauce a soft, rich texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolk proteins set with heat and can curdle or scramble if the sauce gets too hot or is not stirred. Stirring constantly while the mixture heats keeps it smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, egg. 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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