Name: Cream Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint sweet cream; fine white sugar to taste; ½ pint wine (or less, to taste); nutmeg (for garnish)

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Sauce

Ingredients

1 pint sweet cream
fine white sugar to taste
½ pint wine (or less, to taste)
nutmeg (for garnish)

Directions

Make the sauce

Strain the sweet cream into a bowl.
Stir in enough fine white sugar to thicken the cream.
Sweeten the wine and add it to the cream mixture.

Serve

Grate nutmeg over the top before serving.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23,364 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Wine + nutmegtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,356 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Sweet cream: Forms the body and richness of the sauce through its fat content.
Fine white sugar: Sweetens the cream and helps it thicken, as the recipe directs.
Wine: Adds flavour and acidity to the sauce.