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Thick Cream Dressing

A thickened dressing made with butter, flour, milk, egg whites, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Thick Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and flour.

  2. Stir this mixture into the hot milk until smooth.

  3. Cook until the mixture thickens.

  4. Add the mashed egg whites, salt, and cayenne pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Place a spoonful of the dressing on each round of toast.

  2. Sprinkle the top with grated egg yolks and serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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 milk into a smooth, stable dressing as it cooks.
Butter
Combines with the flour to form a smooth base and adds richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into a creamy sauce.
Egg whites
Add body and structure to the dressing once mixed in.
Egg yolks
Sprinkled on top, they add color and a rich, savory finish.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture thickens. Flour needs to be heated long enough, while stirred, for its starch to swell and thicken the milk. Stopping early leaves a thin, starchy-tasting sauce.

“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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