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Cheese Sauce

A warm sauce made from white sauce, grated onion, and cream cheese, served hot over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the white sauce and grated onion.

  2. Heat over medium heat until warm.

  3. Stir in the cream cheese until melted and smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, especially good with fish.

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. Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + cream cheesetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Sauce + cream cheesetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together461 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

White sauce
Forms the creamy base that the cheese melts into.
Cream cheese
Melts into the sauce to add richness, body and a smooth texture.
Grated onion
Adds a mild savory aroma and flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream cheese until melted and smooth. Cream cheese can turn grainy or separate if it is overheated or added to a very hot sauce. Keeping the heat moderate and stirring gently lets the cheese emulsify evenly into the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, cream cheese):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Welsh onionfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cream cheese. 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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