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Cream Sauce

A buttery, parsley-infused sauce made with flour, milk or cream, and aromatics, finished with butter and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the parsley, green onions, shallots, and whole garlic clove; sauté for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for another minute.

  4. Gradually add the milk or cream, stirring constantly until combined.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

  6. Strain the sauce to remove solids.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, reheat the sauce and stir in a little butter, chopped parsley, salt, and whole pepper.

  2. Thicken the sauce over low heat if desired.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and rich flavor while starting the aromatics.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a smooth sauce by gelatinizing with liquid.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving body and a creamy texture.
Shallots
Adds mild onion-like sweetness and aroma as they soften in the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the milk or cream. Adding liquid gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, onion, shallot, garlic, flour, milk):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, onion, shallot, garlic, flour, milk. 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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