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Paprika Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, milk, paprika, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Paprika Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Rub butter and flour together in a saucepan.

  2. While rubbing, place the saucepan over the heat.

  3. Add the cream and milk mixture, salt, paprika, and nutmeg.

  4. Stir briskly until the mixture boils for several minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove from heat and serve hot.

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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with heat and forming a smooth, body-giving structure.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and coats the flour so it blends smoothly.
Cream and milk
Provides the liquid that becomes the sauce and adds a creamy, mellow texture.
Paprika
Adds mild, warm flavour and a reddish colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir briskly until the mixture boils. Stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed so lumps do not form, and the sauce must reach a boil so the starch fully thickens and the flavour cooks out.

“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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