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Thick Cream Sauce

A thickened cream sauce made with butter, corn starch, cream, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Thick Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter in another saucepan until bubbling.

  3. Add the corn starch to the butter and stir until smooth.

  4. Gradually add one-third of the cream and stir until it boils.

  5. Add more cream and boil again until smooth.

  6. Add the remaining cream, salt, and white pepper, and stir well.

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

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

  2. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  3. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  4. Cream + corntop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 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

Cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and provides richness.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth flavour to the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Adding the cream gradually to the butter and starch. Starch must be fully mixed into the butter before liquid is added, and cream should go in slowly while stirring. This keeps lumps from forming and lets the starch granules swell evenly as the sauce heats and thickens.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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