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Sauce

Sauce for Meat

A creamy sauce made from turnips or Jerusalem artichokes, butter, flour, and cream, seasoned with salt and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce for Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the turnips or artichokes.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the chopped vegetables and cook until soft.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Season with salt and add cayenne if desired.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over boiled mutton, veal, lamb, or poultry.

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. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Turnips or jerusalem artichokes
Provide the bulk and mild sweet flavour that the sauce is built around.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the vegetables and gives the sauce a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by binding with the butter and liquid as it heats.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a smooth, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or milk. Adding liquid gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour smooth and prevents lumps, so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, pepper. 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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