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Sauce

Sauce It LA Maitre d’Hotel

A buttery sauce with flour, parsley, shallots, water, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add flour, parsley, and shallots; stir to combine.

  3. Pour in the water and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Cook until the sauce thickens, stirring frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the lemon juice and mix well.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + shallottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,718 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries the parsley and shallot flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the liquid as it heats, giving it body.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green herbal flavor and color to the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sharp onion-like aroma that mellows during cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice. Lemon juice is added just before serving because prolonged heating dulls its bright, fresh acidity and aroma. Mixing it in well ensures the flavor is spread evenly through the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

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

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatoabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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