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Sauce

Sauce, Blanche

A light white sauce made with butter, flour, water, and optional butter, egg yolk, or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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, Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a clean small saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add ¼ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon white pepper.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour, mixing well.

  4. Gradually pour in ½ pint of boiling water while stirring continuously.

  5. Let the mixture simmer gently for 4 minutes.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and stir in a piece of fresh butter the size of a walnut.

  2. For a variation, beat 1 egg yolk with ½ teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice and stir it into the sauce instead of the butter.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch gelatinises during simmering.
Egg yolk
Optional; enriches and thickens the sauce with its proteins and fat.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling water gradually while stirring continuously. Adding the liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, which prevents lumps from forming as the starch thickens the sauce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, walnut, egg, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, walnut, egg, vinegar. 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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