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Sauce

Chateaubriand Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, white stock, egg yolks, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chateaubriand Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook without browning.

  3. Gradually add the white stock and bring to a boil for five minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain in the egg yolks, then add lemon juice and parsley.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and do not let the sauce boil after adding the eggs.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Cooked in the butter to form a roux that thickens the stock.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavours.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the eggs. Egg yolks thicken by setting their proteins with gentle heat. At boiling temperature they overcook and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy and thin instead of smooth and glossy.

“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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