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Lemon White Sauce, for Boiled Folds

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

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 Folds

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

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

  2. Simmer gently until the cream is infused with lemon flavor, then strain it.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the strained cream with butter and flour, stirring well.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil, then add the strained lemon juice and mix well.

  3. Serve the sauce over boiled chickens, adding hot white gravy and salt to taste.

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 cream
Forms the base of the sauce and carries the lemon flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the rich cream.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil, then add the lemon juice. Acid can cause cream to curdle or separate when heated, so the juice is added after the sauce has thickened and mixed well to keep it smooth.

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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