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Dessert

Cold Sauce

A chilled sauce made from cream, sugar, butter, nutmeg, vanilla, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cold Sauce

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the cream, sugar, and butter in a bowl and beat thoroughly until well combined.

  2. Add nutmeg, vanilla, or grated lemon to taste.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Adds moisture and richness, helping the sauce feel smooth and soft.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and body, helping the sauce hold its texture when beaten.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Beat thoroughly until well combined. Beating the butter and sugar together dissolves the sugar and incorporates air, so the sauce turns smooth and creamy rather than grainy or separated.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, butter, nutmeg, vanilla. 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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