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Sauce

Chicken Sauce for Boiled Fowls

A buttery sauce made with flour, boiling water, egg yolks, pepper, salt, and lemon juice for boiled fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Sauce for Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a bright saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Once it bubbles, stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water, stirring until smooth.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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
Adds fat for richness and a rounded flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Their proteins thicken and enrich the sauce, adding richness and a silky texture.

The step that matters

Mix in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolk proteins set at around 65 to 70°C and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing it from the heat before stirring in the yolks lets them thicken it smoothly.

“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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