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Sauce

Milk and Egg Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, and optional flavorings for fish or macaroni.

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 ↓

Milk and Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix butter and flour over medium heat.

  2. Add milk and stir constantly until it thickens slightly.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with water and mix into the sauce, ensuring it does not boil.

Finish

  1. For fish, add vinegar or lemon juice and grated lemon peel.

  2. For macaroni, layer with grated cheese and pour sauce before baking.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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
Forms the fat base of the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and further thickens the sauce when gently heated.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk without boiling. Egg proteins set when heated and can curdle or turn grainy if the sauce boils. Keeping the sauce below boiling, and mixing the beaten yolk in gradually, keeps it smooth and thick.

“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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