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Sauce

Fennel Sauce

A sauce made from boiled fennel, butter, flour, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fennel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fennel

  1. Place the fennel in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  2. Add a pinch of baking soda and bring to a boil.

  3. Strain the fennel and press out the water.

  4. Pound the fennel with 1 ounce of butter.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, melt the remaining butter and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the milk and seasoning, stirring until boiling.

  3. Boil for three minutes, then add the pounded fennel and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fennel + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,216 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Fennel + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Fennel
Provides the main flavour and, once pounded, the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the fennel flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, coating sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Adding the milk gradually while stirring keeps the flour mixture smooth. Adding it all at once can form lumps that are hard to remove, so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the fennel

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, 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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