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Sauce Allemande

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, consommé, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce Allemande

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Mix in the flour until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the consomme, salt, and pepper, stirring until boiling.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes, then remove from heat.

Finish with egg yolks

  1. Once the sauce stops boiling, mix the egg yolks with a little water.

  2. Quickly stir the egg mixture into the sauce using an egg beater to make it light.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.
Consomme
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies its savoury flavour.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and a velvety texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks in after boiling stops. Egg yolks set when overheated and can curdle or scramble in a boiling sauce. Removing the sauce from boiling and stirring quickly keeps the yolks smooth and evenly blended.

“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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