Skip to main content
Main

Cream-sauce for Venison

A creamy sauce made with heavy cream, egg yolks, butter, flour, onion, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream-sauce for Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cream and eggs

  1. In a saucepan, heat the cream over low heat until warm.

  2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks.

  3. Gradually add the warm cream to the egg yolks, stirring constantly.

Cook the onion and flour

  1. In another pan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion until soft.

  2. Stir in the flour and salt, cooking for 1-2 minutes.

Combine and thicken

  1. Combine the cream mixture with the onion mixture and cook until thickened.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Heavy cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety body.
Egg yolks
Act as an emulsifier and thickener, setting into a silky texture as they heat.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and carries the onion's aroma into the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as it cooks with the butter.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the warm cream to the egg yolks. If the cream is added too quickly or is too hot, the yolks can scramble and curdle. Adding it gradually while stirring constantly tempers the eggs so they blend smoothly into the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, butter, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes