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Sauce

Veloute Sauce

A classic French sauce made from a roux of butter and flour, white stock, milk or cream, and seasoned with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Veloute Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veloute Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir the flour smoothly into the melted butter.

  3. Gradually add the white stock while stirring.

  4. Stir until boiling and then boil for three to four minutes, skimming off any foam.

  5. Add the milk or cream and lemon juice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Melts to carry flavour and enrich the sauce, and it coats the flour to form the base.
Flour
Its starch thickens the stock once heated, giving the sauce body.
White stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce and supplies its main savoury flavour.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually while stirring. Flour starch must be evenly dispersed in the fat before the liquid goes in. Adding stock slowly and stirring constantly lets the starch hydrate evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, well-thickened sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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