Why it works: Cream and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓
French White Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Combine ½ pint of white stock and savory herbs in a saucepan and bring to a simmer.
Mix 1 tablespoon of cream with 1 teaspoon of arrowroot until smooth.
Stir the cream mixture into the stock.
Add ¼ teaspoon of salt and cook until thickened.
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.
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Cream + arrowroottop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together490 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- White stock
- Forms the liquid base that the sauce thickens and carries flavour.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the sauce.
- Arrowroot
- Thickens the liquid as its starch swells and sets when heated.
The step that matters
Mixing the arrowroot into the cream until smooth. Starch clumps if it meets hot liquid undispersed. Mixing it smooth with cream first lets the granules separate, so stirring it into the stock gives an even, lump-free thickening.
“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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