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Sauce

Lemon White Sauce, for hoUcd Fowls

A creamy lemon sauce made with cream, lemon peel, thyme, peppercorns, butter, flour, and lemon juice.

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 hoUcd Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the cream

  1. Combine cream, lemon peel, lemon thyme, and peppercorns in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently until it tastes of lemon, then strain.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken with butter and flour, stirring well.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add strained lemon juice, stirring continuously.

  3. Serve over cooked chickens, mixing in hot white gravy without boiling.

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

Cream
Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries the lemon flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and butter.
Lemon peel
Supplies aromatic oils that scent the cream with lemon.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice. Lemon juice can curdle or thin cream when it is heated hard. Stirring it in continuously and keeping the sauce from a full boil helps keep it smooth and glossy.

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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