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Cream Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, milk, onion, anchovy essence, egg yolk, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour and gradually add the milk, stirring until boiling.

  3. Add the onion, anchovy essence, salt, and cayenne, and simmer for three minutes.

  4. Remove the onion from the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the yolk, then mix in the cream and lemon juice.

  2. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cream mixture; do not boil again.

  3. Serve the sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and body when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the yolk and cream mixture off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and curdles if it boils. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring in the cream mixture lets it thicken smoothly without scrambling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, anchovy, cream, lemon):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, anchovy, cream, lemon. 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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