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Fennel Sauce

A sauce made with finely minced fennel, velouté and butter sauces, seasoned with salt and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fennel and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 96 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fennel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fennel

  1. Pick, blanch, and mince the fennel very finely. Refresh and drain it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the velouté and butter sauce. Heat it until ready to serve.

  2. Add the minced fennel to the sauce and mix well.

  3. Season with salt and nutmeg.

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. Fennel + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sauce + nutmegtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,244 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Fennel + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Branches of green fennel
Provides the main fresh, aromatic flavour and green texture of the sauce.
Velouté sauce
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, giving body and smoothness.
Butter sauce
Adds richness and fat, making the sauce smooth and rounded.

Swap the fennel

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, nutmeg. 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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