Name: English White Sauce
Ingredients: a pint of boiling cream; 1/2 pint; 1 lemon-rind; 1 teaspoonful; 1/4 pint; salt

Why it works: Cream and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,640 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

English White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Boil softly in half a pint of well-flavoured pale veal gravy a few very thin strips of fresh lemon-rind, for just sufficient time to give their flavour to it.
Stir in a thickening of arrow-root, or of flour and butter.
Add salt if needed.
Mix with the gravy a quarter of a pint of boiling cream.
For the best kind of white sauce, see béchamel, page 107.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

51Calories

0 gProtein

5 gFat

0 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 2 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Cream	1 tbsp (15ml) heavy	51
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

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

By Eliza Acton. 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.

Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,640 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Boiling cream: Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Arrow-root or flour and butter (in the method): Thickens the gravy so the sauce coats the back of a spoon.
Lemon-rind: Adds a bright, aromatic citrus flavour to the gravy.

“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.