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Cheese Sauce

A quick cheese sauce made with cornstarch, milk, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,426 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix cornstarch with a small amount of cold water.

  2. Add scalded milk and cook for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in the grated cheese until melted and smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Swells and thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, with proteins and fat that make the sauce creamy.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding fat, flavor and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the starch while stirring. Cornstarch must be heated in liquid to thicken. Constant stirring spreads the starch evenly so the sauce does not clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan.

“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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