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Sauce

Mock Cream Sauce

A sweet sauce made from milk, sugar, egg yolk, vanilla, and arrow-root thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Mock Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the milk

  1. Boil the sweet milk.

  2. Dissolve the arrow-root in 2 tablespoons of milk.

  3. Add the dissolved arrow-root to the boiling milk to thicken.

Enrich and flavor

  1. Whip the egg yolk and sugar together.

  2. Add the mixture to the thickened milk.

  3. Flavor with vanilla.

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.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 milk
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Arrow-root
Starch that thickens the hot milk into a smooth, lightly set sauce.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier body to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the flavor.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and a rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved arrow-root to the boiling milk. Arrow-root must be fully dissolved in cold milk before it meets the hot liquid. Added dry or undissolved, starch clumps instead of thickening evenly, leaving lumps in the sauce.

“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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