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Sweet Sauce

A cream sauce thickened with flour and flavored with sherry, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Sweet Sauce

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the flour with the sherry and stir it into the boiling cream.

  3. Add a little grated nutmeg and sweeten to taste with caster sugar.

  4. Let the sauce simmer for fifteen minutes, stirring constantly, then 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.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sherry + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,246 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it simmers, giving it body.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a fortified wine aroma that flavours the sauce.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the sauce to taste, balancing the sherry.

The step that matters

Simmer while stirring constantly. Flour thickens only as its starch swells in hot liquid. Stirring keeps the flour dispersed and prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan, so the sauce turns smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, sherry, sugar. 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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