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Cream Sauce

A thickened cream sauce made with butter, cornstarch, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, smooth the cornstarch with a little cold milk.

  2. Heat the cream in a double boiler.

  3. Add the dissolved cornstarch to the cream and stir constantly until thickened.

  4. Add the butter and continue stirring until blended, cooking for 10 minutes.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, celery salt, parsley, onion juice, and lemon juice as desired.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides the rich body and fat that give the sauce its smooth, creamy texture.
Cornstarch
Swells when heated in liquid, thickening the cream into a sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, helping the sauce feel smooth and well blended.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved cornstarch to the cream and stir constantly. Cornstarch clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly or sits still. Stirring constantly keeps it dispersed so it thickens smoothly as the starch granules swell.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, milk, pepper, celery, parsley, lemon. 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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