Skip to main content
Sauce

Simple White Sauce

A light sauce made by whisking egg yolk and cream into boiling stock, then seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Simple White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Bring the stock to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, stir the egg yolk with the cream.

  3. Strain the egg mixture into the boiling stock.

Finish and serve

  1. Cook for a few moments without boiling.

  2. Season to taste and serve.

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 + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Stock
Forms the liquid base that the egg and cream thicken and flavour.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as its proteins set gently when heated.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the sauce a rounder, richer texture.

The step that matters

Cook for a few moments without boiling.. Egg yolk thickens the sauce through gentle heat. If it boils, the proteins tighten and scramble, leaving the sauce grainy and curdled rather than smooth.

“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.

More white sauce recipes

English 22Turnips in 20Fish in 17for Poultry 12Cauliflower in 11Lemon 9 See all 309 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes