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Sauce

Cream Sauce

A creamy sauce made from milk, mace, bay leaf, egg yolks, and thick double cream, served over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream Sauce

Why it works: Milk and butter 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. Boil the milk with the mace and bay leaf.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the hot milk, stirring continuously until thickened.

  3. Strain the mixture into a basin.

  4. Quickly stir in the thick double cream.

Serve

  1. If using mushrooms, trim and fry them in butter for five minutes before adding to the sauce.

  2. Serve the sauce over fish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  4. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the hot milk as they cook, giving the sauce body and a silky texture.
Double cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the hot milk. Egg yolks set by heat, so they can scramble if the milk is too hot or stirring stops. Stir continuously while the mixture thickens, then strain to remove any small lumps.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, cream, butter, mushroom. 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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