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Sauce

Cream Sauce

A light, sweet cream sauce flavored with bitter almond extract and nutmeg, thickened with corn starch and folded with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until scalding.

  2. Add the sugar and stir in the corn-starch mixed with cold water.

  3. When the mixture thickens, gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

  4. Add the extract of bitter almonds and nutmeg, then remove from heat.

  5. Set the saucepan in boiling water to keep warm without cooking until ready to serve.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + corntop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Nutmeg + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in at the end, they add lightness and a soft, airy texture to the sauce.
Corn-starch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, glossy sauce as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the almond flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Egg whites are fragile and deflate when stirred hard or overheated. Fold them in gently after the starch has thickened, and keep the pan warm rather than boiling so the foam stays light.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, egg, nutmeg, corn):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits less well
  4. Pistachiofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, sugar, egg, nutmeg, corn. 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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