Skip to main content
Sauce

Cream Sauce

A creamy sauce made with sweet cream, butter, parsley, and strained gravy, served over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream Sauce

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine hot water and sweet cream.

  2. Stir in butter and chopped parsley.

  3. Place the saucepan in a kettle of boiling water.

  4. Add the strained gravy and stir well.

Finish and serve

  1. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and add another tablespoon of butter.

  2. Pour the sauce around the fish on a hot platter and garnish with parsley.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cream + parsleytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,392 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

Sweet cream
Provides richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, thick texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and a rounded, rich flavour.
Strained gravy from the dripping-pan
Contributes savoury meat flavour that deepens the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and add butter. Boiling the cream-based sauce thickens it, but overheating can cause it to separate or turn greasy. Removing it from heat before stirring in the final butter keeps the emulsion smooth and glossy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Macefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes