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Dessert

Vanilla Sauce

A thickened milk sauce flavored with vanilla, made by combining cornflour, sugar, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Vanilla Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the cornflour smoothly with a little of the milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk in a jug placed in a saucepan of boiling water until hot.

  3. Add the sugar and the moistened cornflour to the hot milk, stirring until it thickens.

Enrich with egg and serve

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add 2 to 3 tablespoons of the sauce to the beaten egg.

  3. Pour the egg mixture back into the jug.

  4. Stir the mixture for a few minutes to cook the egg.

  5. Add the vanilla essence 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sauce thickens and carries flavour.
Cornflour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the milk.
Egg
Adds richness and further thickening as its proteins set with gentle heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the flavour of the milk and egg.
Vanilla essence
Adds aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg without scrambling. Adding hot sauce to the beaten egg gradually warms it so the proteins do not seize. Stirring gently over heat then cooks the egg and thickens the sauce smoothly. Too much heat too fast can curdle it into lumps.

“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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