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Sauce Allemande

A velouté-based sauce thickened with an extra egg yolk, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sauce Allemande

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Prepare Veloute sauce, boiling it down before and after thickening until strong and well flavored.

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of eggs, adding one more than used for the Veloute.

  3. Mix in a pinch of grated nutmeg and the butter.

Finish the sauce

  1. When the sauce is boiling, gradually stir it into the egg mixture.

  2. Return the mixture over boiling water and stir rapidly for a few minutes without letting it boil. Be careful not to let it curdle.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sauce + nutmegtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,244 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Veloute sauce
Provides the thickened, savory base that the egg yolks enrich.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they gently set with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth texture and a rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Returning the mixture over boiling water. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the sauce gets too hot it scrambles and curdles. Stirring rapidly over simmering water spreads heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, butter. 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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