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Sauce

Cream Sauce

A sweet almond-flavored cream sauce made with milk, sugar, egg whites, nutmeg, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the milk until scalding.

  3. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water to form a paste.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the hot milk.

  2. Once thickened, gently fold in the whipped egg whites and add the almond extract and nutmeg.

  3. Remove from heat and place the saucepan in boiling water to keep warm without cooking.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped to add airy lightness to the finished sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, glossy sauce when heated.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the almond flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites deflate quickly and can be lost if stirred vigorously. Fold gently so the air stays in the sauce, and keep the saucepan warm without boiling so the sauce does not curdle or cook the whites into lumps.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, nutmeg. 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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