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Sauce

Cream Sauce

A lemon-flavored cream sauce made with powdered sugar, butter, egg yolks, cream, lemon juice, nutmeg, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat together the powdered sugar, butter, and egg yolks until creamy.

  2. Add the cream or rich milk and cook over hot water until thickened.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, nutmeg, and beaten egg whites until well combined.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 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

Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the butter and yolks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it as they gently heat.
Cream or rich milk
Provides moisture and body, giving the sauce its creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and richness.
Egg whites
Add lightness and airiness when folded in at the end.

The step that matters

Cooking over hot water until thickened. Egg yolks thicken gently as they warm, but too much heat can curdle or scramble them. Cooking over simmering water, not direct heat, keeps the sauce smooth and controls the thickening.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, cream, nutmeg. 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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