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Sauce

Plain Egg Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, milk, lemon juice, pepper, salt, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Plain Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour smoothly.

  3. Add the milk and stir well while cooking.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add lemon juice, seasoning, and chopped egg whites.

  2. For a thicker sauce, use 2 oz of flour.

  3. Cream may be added if desired.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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
Melts with the flour to form a roux, adding richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Chopped whites add texture and mild flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Add the milk and stir well while cooking. Flour starch must be evenly dispersed and heated to thicken. Constant stirring keeps the starch from clumping and gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

“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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