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Sauce Touenee, or Plain Sauce

A butter-based sauce with ham, mushrooms, flour, and consomme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Sauce Touenee, or Plain Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. In a thick stewpan, melt the butter over moderate heat.

  2. Add the ham and mushrooms, stirring until the butter is clear.

  3. Remove the mushrooms and set them aside.

  4. Mix flour into the butter until it reaches a paste-like thickness.

Add the consomme

  1. Gradually stir in the consomme, starting with 3 tablespoons, until the stewpan is nearly full.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring continuously to prevent burning.

  3. If too thick, add more consomme until the desired consistency is reached.

  4. Once reduced to a smooth batter, strain the sauce through a tammy into a basin.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 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

Butter
Forms the fat base that carries flour and flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a paste, then a smooth batter.
Consomme
Supplies the liquid that the flour-butter paste thickens into the sauce.
Lean ham
Adds savoury meaty flavour to the butter that the sauce absorbs.

The step that matters

Adding the consomme. Liquid must be added gradually so the flour-butter paste stays smooth; adding it all at once creates lumps. Stirring while bringing to a boil prevents the flour from scorching on the base of the pan.

“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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