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Cream Sauce

A simple sauce made with milk, cayenne pepper, celery salt, flour, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and celery 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 ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the milk

  1. Combine milk, cayenne pepper, and celery salt in a saucepan.

  2. Heat until it reaches a boil.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Mix flour and oil in a separate bowl until smooth.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the milk mixture.

  3. Stir until smooth.

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.

  1. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + celerytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens as it heats.
Flour
Its starch swells in hot liquid, thickening the sauce and giving it body.
Oil
Fat that coats the flour particles so they blend smoothly instead of clumping.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixture to the milk mixture. Flour clumps when it meets hot liquid without being dispersed first. Mixing it smooth with oil beforehand and stirring as it goes helps the starch spread evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, flour. 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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