Why it works: Cream and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓
Cream Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Scald 1 cup of sweet cream until it boils.
Pour the hot cream over the well-beaten yolks of 2 eggs.
Add a pinch of salt and stir briskly.
Quickly mix in 1 tablespoon of vinegar to prevent curdling.
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.
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Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,064 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,922 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
- Sweet cream
- Provides the liquid base and richness that the sauce is built on.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the sauce as their proteins set gently in the warm cream.
- Vinegar
- Its acidity helps keep the egg proteins from curdling in the hot sauce.
The step that matters
Pouring the hot cream over the yolks. Adding hot cream to yolks too fast can scramble them. Pour slowly while whisking so the yolks warm gradually and thicken smoothly instead of setting in lumps.
“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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