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Cream Sauce for Roast Neck of Teal

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, consomme, nutmeg, pepper, mushroom essence, and parsley, simmered for 20 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for Roast Neck of Teal

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Knead the butter with the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the cream, consomme, nutmeg, pepper, essence of mushrooms, and parsley.

  3. Stir the sauce until it boils, then keep it gently boiling for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the onion and parsley, then strain the sauce through a tammy into a bain-marie for use.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
White consomme
Adds savoury liquid and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keeping the sauce gently boiling. Flour needs sustained heat to fully cook and thicken; stirring while it comes to the boil prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

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