Skip to main content
Sauce

Meat and Fish Sauces

A simple sauce for meat and fish made with flour, butter, milk or water, optionally flavored with mint, celery, or onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Meat and Fish Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and butter until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan with milk or water.

  3. Place the saucepan in a double boiler and stir well.

  4. Allow the mixture to come to a boil.

Add flavourings and serve

  1. If using vegetables, boil them first, mince, and gradually add to the sauce.

  2. To reheat, place the gravy bowl in boiling water.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + minttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Butter + minttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Milk or water
Provides the liquid that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture heats. Flour must be fully mixed into the butter and liquid and stirred as it heats, otherwise it can clump or scorch. Gentle, steady stirring in a double boiler lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes