Skip to main content
Sauce

Cream Sauce

A simple sauce made by melting butter, whisking in flour, and adding hot milk until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream Sauce

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 ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  3. Slowly add the hot milk, stirring continuously.

  4. Let it boil for a few minutes until perfectly blended.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinizes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, providing body, creaminess and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the milk slowly while stirring. Adding hot milk gradually and stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed in the fat, preventing lumps. Starch granules hydrate evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of clumping.

“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.

More cream sauce recipes

Whipped 47for Fish 21Mushroom 19Fish 18Lemon 18Horseradish 16 See all 209 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes