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Sauce

Mock Cream Sauce

A sauce made from boiling milk, arrowroot, cold milk, and egg white, thickened and heated.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Mock Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a small amount of cold milk.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the arrowroot mixture and stir well.

  3. When the mixture is moderately warm, add the beaten egg white.

  4. Place the mixture over the fire and stir until it nearly boils.

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 + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Arrowroot + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Egg white
Adds body and a light, creamy texture to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the main liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture over the fire until it nearly boils. Arrowroot must be heated while stirred so its starch swells and thickens evenly; stopping short or letting it boil unchecked can leave the sauce thin or lumpy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg. 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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