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Sauce

Cream Sauce for Salmon

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, cream, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt.

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 ↓

Cream Sauce for Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until it bubbles.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the hot cream.

  4. Heat until nearly boiling.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set, and add richness.
Cream
Provides the liquid base and richness that gives the sauce its smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor.
Flour
Its starch thickens the cream when heated, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolk proteins begin to set around 65°C (150°F). Adding them to a very hot sauce can scramble them into lumps, so remove the pan from the heat first and stir steadily.

“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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