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Sauce

Cream Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, parsley, onion, pepper, salt, nutmeg, cream or milk, and optional horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cream together the butter and flour over gentle heat.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, grated onion, pepper, salt, and nutmeg; mix well.

  3. Pour in the cream or milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.

Finish

  1. If serving with fresh fish, stir in horseradish if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor, with flour to form a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the butter and liquid.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and adds richness and smoothness.
Grated onion
Adds savory aroma and mild flavor to the sauce.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavor to the cream base.

The step that matters

Simmer after the boil. Once the cream reaches a boil it can scorch or separate if heated too hard, so keep it at a gentle simmer while it thickens and the flour fully cooks.

Swap the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, onion, pepper, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, onion, pepper, nutmeg, cream. 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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