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Sauce

Sauce Blanche

Sauce blanche is a creamy white sauce made with butter, flour, water, spices, lemon, egg yolk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the flour with the butter over low heat in a saucepan.

  2. Add the water while stirring continuously until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and season with salt, nutmeg, mace, and lemon peel.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, add a little water; if too thin, add more butter mixed with flour.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice or vinegar, then add the egg yolk and cream.

  6. For best results, mix half the butter with the flour and add the remaining butter just before serving.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Forms the roux with the flour and gives the sauce its rich flavour and smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot butter and water as it cooks.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and thickens the sauce gently when stirred in.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, giving the sauce a smoother, milder texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the water into the roux. Adding the water while stirring continuously keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth rather than lumpy as the flour thickens it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, egg, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, egg, cream. 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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