Name: Cream Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint sweet cream; 2 tablespoons white powdered sugar; ½ teaspoon powdered cinnamon

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

1 pint sweet cream
2 tablespoons white powdered sugar
½ teaspoon powdered cinnamon

Directions

Make the sauce

Beat the cream and sugar together until it foams.
Stir in the cinnamon.

Serve

Serve with cottage cheese.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cream + cinnamontop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,510 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 fat and body, giving the sauce its rich, smooth texture once whipped.
Powdered sugar: Dissolves easily into the cream, adding sweetness and helping it foam smoothly.
Powdered cinnamon: Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the cream.