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Sauce

Creamy Sauce

A sweet sauce made from butter, powdered sugar, cream, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Creamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Slowly add the powdered sugar while mixing.

  3. Beat in the white wine.

  4. Just before serving, add the cream.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, combine the cream and wine, then cook over hot water until smooth and creamy, but do not melt the butter.

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.

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

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed to give the sauce its body and rich fat flavour.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a softer, smoother texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and a light aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking over hot water without melting the butter. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water. If it gets too hot it melts and separates, leaving the sauce greasy and grainy instead of smooth and creamy. Gentle, indirect heat keeps it stable.

“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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