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Cream Sauce for Fish or White Dishes

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, salt, cayenne, and optional mace or lemon juice, simmered for five minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,009 recipes. The science ↓

Cream Sauce for Fish or White Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Put the butter in a very clean saucepan.

  2. Dredge the butter in the flour and keep shaking until the butter is melted.

Add cream and simmer

  1. Add the seasoning and cream, and stir the mixture until it boils.

  2. Let the sauce simmer for 5 minutes.

Flavor and finish

  1. Add pounded mace or lemon juice to taste to give it flavor.

  2. Optionally, flavor with finely shredded shallot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

512Calories
14 gProtein
7 gFat
96 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  2. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Flour + macetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,974 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when cooked in melted butter and liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Shaking the flour into the melted butter. Flour must be coated and cooked in the fat before the cream goes in. If it clumps, the starch cannot disperse evenly, leaving lumps and an uneven, floury taste.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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