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Sauce

Cream Sauce

A sauce made from bechamel, cream, fresh cream, and lemon juice, served with fish, poultry, eggs, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil 1 pint of bechamel sauce.

  2. Add ½ cup of cream and reduce on an open fire until very thick.

  3. Pass the sauce through a tammy (fine sieve).

  4. Away from the fire, gradually add ¼ cup of fresh cream.

  5. Add a few drops of lemon juice to reach the desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled fish, poultry, eggs, and various vegetables.

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Bechamel sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it body and a smooth, coating texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, and thickens further as it reduces over heat.
Fresh cream
Added off the heat to enrich flavour and keep the sauce lighter and silkier.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce on an open fire. Reducing too little leaves the sauce thin, while reducing too hard can scorch the dairy on the base of the pan. Keeping the heat controlled lets water evaporate evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly without catching or curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cream. 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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