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Cream Sauce

A lemon-flavored sauce made with egg yolks, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and white pepper.

  2. Add the hard butter and place the saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon, removing from heat if it gets too hot.

  4. Once the butter has melted and thickened with the eggs, add the melted butter.

  5. Stir over the heat without allowing it to boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve into another saucepan.

  2. When ready to serve, heat the sauce gently until hot.

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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce as they heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that balances the richness of the butter.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, giving the sauce its smooth, silky body.

The step that matters

Stir over the heat without allowing it to boil. Egg yolks thicken as they warm but scramble if they get too hot. Boiling can curdle the sauce, so keep the heat gentle and remove the pan if it becomes too hot.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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