Why it works: Cream and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,009 recipes. The science ↓
White Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Heat the mace in a saucepan until hot.
Mix the flour into the cream until smooth.
Stir the cream mixture into the hot stock, adding salt if needed.
Continue stirring until the sauce boils, then remove the mace.
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.
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Cream + macetop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,009 recipes
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Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Flour + macetop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,974 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- White stock
- Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
- Cream
- Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
- Flour
- Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
The step that matters
Mixing the flour into the cream. Flour clumps if dropped into hot liquid, so it should be whisked smoothly into the cold cream first. Starch then thickens evenly when the mixture is added to the stock and brought to a boil.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour):
- Jalapenofits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Turmericfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour. 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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