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Dessert

Orange Cream Sauce, Hot

A hot sauce made from cream, sugar, orange zest, orange juice, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Cream Sauce, Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the cream over medium heat.

  2. Whisk in the sugar, orange zest, and orange juice.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk to make a smooth paste.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the saucepan and stir continuously.

  5. Cook for 3-4 minutes until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve hot over puddings, pies, or fritters.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Orange + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Cream
Provides richness and body, giving the sauce its smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the orange.
Orange zest
Contributes concentrated citrus aroma and flavour.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and fruity flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the heated liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be fully smoothed into a paste first and stirred constantly as it goes in, because undissolved flour clumps and starch only thickens evenly when the liquid is heated and kept moving.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, flour. 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.

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