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Cheese Sauce

A creamy cheese sauce made with butter, cornstarch, cheese, mustard, milk, egg, and Worcestershire sauce, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch and cook thoroughly.

  3. Add the grated cheese, mustard, salt, cayenne, Worcestershire sauce, and milk.

  4. Bring to a boil, then stir in the beaten egg.

Serve

  1. Place cooked fish on a hot dish, cover with the cheese sauce, and sprinkle with browned breadcrumbs.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Provides the main flavor and, once melted into the milk, creates the sauce's body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinizes.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and with cornstarch forms the base roux.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce when stirred in near boiling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg after boiling. Egg proteins set with heat and can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot or boiled too long. Stirring steadily as the egg goes in keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, pepper, sauce, milk, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, pepper, sauce, milk, egg. 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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