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Thick Cream Sauce

A thickened sauce made from cream, butter, flour or corn starch, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Thick Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Scald the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan until bubbling.

  3. Add the dry flour or corn starch and stir until well mixed.

  4. Gradually add one-third of the cream, stirring as it boils and thickens.

  5. Continue adding more cream and boil until the sauce is very thick and smooth.

Season

  1. Add the seasoning and mix while hot with meat or 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Cream
Forms the liquid base that the thickener sets into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour so it can be cooked without lumps.
Flour or corn starch
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the cream gradually. Adding cream in portions while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, which prevents lumps. Adding it all at once can leave clumps of undissolved flour or starch that are hard to smooth out.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, flour, celery, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, celery, pepper. 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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