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Egg Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, water, egg yolks, lemon juice, minced hard‑boiled egg, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until light brown.

  3. Gradually add the milk and water, cooking until thickened.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, minced hard-boiled egg, and parsley.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Keep the sauce warm in hot water, stirring continuously until heated through.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  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
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy sauce.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, setting gently as the sauce warms.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Hard boiled egg
Adds texture and a mild egg flavour through its finely minced pieces.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble into grainy lumps. Keep the heat low and stir constantly while adding them and while keeping the sauce warm.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Cardamomabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, lemon, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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