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Dessert

Creamy Sauce

A butter-based sauce sweetened with powdered sugar and thickened with cream, flavored with sherry or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Add the sherry (or vanilla) and cream a little at a time.

  4. Once smooth, place the bowl in a dish of hot water and stir until the sauce is smooth and creamy.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat that makes the sauce rich and gives it a creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the sauce as it dissolves into the butter.
Cream
Adds moisture and softens the sauce into a smooth, pourable texture.
Sherry or vanilla
Adds aroma and flavour that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Adding the powdered sugar gradually while beating. Powdered sugar added slowly dissolves into the butter and blends evenly, while adding it all at once tends to leave lumps and a grainy texture.

“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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