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Supreme Sauce

A creamy chicken sauce made with broth, roux, cream, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Supreme Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Clean the chicken thoroughly and place it in a saucepan, covering it with water.

  2. Cook quickly.

  3. Drain and wash the chicken.

  4. Return the chicken to a clean saucepan.

  5. Cover with white broth.

  6. Add salt.

  7. Cook for 45 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the white roux with the broth.

  2. Stir continuously until reduced by half.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine strainer.

  4. Add the cream, butter, and lemon juice.

  5. Stir to combine.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

White roux
Thickens the broth into a smooth, coating sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silky texture that softens the sauce's sharpness.
Butter
Adds fat for a glossy finish and rounded flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and butter.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until reduced by half. The sauce can scorch on the base of the pan or form lumps as the roux thickens. Constant stirring keeps heat even and the starch dispersed, giving a smooth sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, butter. 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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