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Sauce

Chaudfroid Sauce, White

A reduced sauce of béchamel, aspic, and cream, strained for a smooth white finish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Chaudfroid Sauce, White

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the béchamel, aspic, and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Boil and skim until reduced by a third.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve and let cool.

Adjust the sauce

  1. For a whiter sauce, substitute with ⅓ cup thick cream and ⅓ cup sauce suprême.

  2. If too thin, reduce further by boiling or add dissolved gelatine in milk.

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Béchamel sauce
Provides the thick, creamy body that gives the sauce its coating texture.
Strong aspic
Adds gelling power so the sauce sets into a glossy coating as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil and skim until reduced by a third. Boiling evaporates water, which concentrates the sauce and thickens it. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the finished coating. Reducing too little leaves the sauce too thin to set well on cold food.

“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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