Skip to main content
Main

Salsifis a LA Sauce Blanche

Salsifis cooked in a white sauce of butter, flour, stock, and seasoned with pepper, salt, and a vinegar‑egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Salsifis a LA Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  3. Moisten the mixture with water or white stock.

  4. Add pepper and salt, then bring to a boil.

Cook the salsifis

  1. Add the partly boiled salsifis, cover, and simmer gently for one hour.

  2. Once done, dish the salsifis and mix the egg yolk with the vinegar.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the salsifis 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a white sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the sauce when stirred in, adding richness and a silky texture.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its creaminess.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and vinegar. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently, but if it is added to very hot liquid without care it can scramble. Mixing it with vinegar first and pouring it over the dish just before serving helps keep the sauce smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes