1,557 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Cream and sauces

Have you ever wondered why making beautiful tasty sauces is so easy when you use cream?

23 K 4.4/5 (20 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Sauce Recipe Taste Cream

Last modified on: October 15^th 2012

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Cream and sauces

First of all, we need to be aware that some flavours only dissolve in water, while others only dissolve in fats.

This phenomenon leads to this kind of accident: If you put a chocolate mousse uncovered in the fridge where you are also keeping fish, the chocolate, being mostly made up of cocoa butter (a fat), will absorb the fish smell. Imagine the taste…

So we have water on the one side and fats on the other. Cream seen under the microscope is made up of water with minute fat globules (which come from milk) suspended in it.

This gives us the explanation: the make up of cream allows it to absorb both types of flavours, so it can absorb virtually all flavours. This means that cream produces sauces which are always full of flavour drawn from everything around it (whatever is stuck on the bottom of the pan, the ingredients in the recipe, etc.).

Add to this that during cooking a proportion of the cream will evaporate, and this means that it will thicken and give a rich smooth texture in the mouth – perfect!

And then there's the question of all those calories, but that's quite another matter…

Lasts posts

XO Cognac Explained: Meaning, Aging, and Flavor Profile

XO Cognac always goes beyond the labels on the bottle: it is often associated with tradition and quality. You get to appreciate the artistry, character and ageing process when you understand what defines this smooth Cognac. The section below tackles everything about XO Cognac, from complex flavour...
January 28^th 2026759 Sponsored article

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20252,5315

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,6495

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,494

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20254,9395

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Different kinds of pastry and dough

When cooking in general, and particularly in baking, we can make and use many different kinds of pastry and dough. All built on the same "base": flour - a powder to which we add fat, liquid or both to produce the dough which is then cooked. .
November 6^th 2012112 K 14.0

Steam for baking bread

What does steam have to do with bread-making? This is not only a bakers' secret, it is something you might not think of at all: if you make bread and bake it like a cake, you will end up with bread, but pale and with a thick, hard crust – a long way from the golden-brown crusty loaf you had in...
June 16^th 2021148 K4.5

A few tips for effective kneading at home

When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.
June 23^th 2021285 K 23.8

Rosemary in recipes

Rosemary, as I’m sure you know, is a culinary herb, one of the famous French "herbes de Provence", and is very effective in bringing a real taste of the Mediterranean to any dish. The classic way to use it in a recipe is to add a sprig or two and leave it in during cooking as a way of...
April 18^th 201824 K4.7

Coarsely chopped herbs

Although we are in the middle of winter as I write these lines, you should not hesitate to make salads at this time, it is actually quite simple, rather fast, and so pleasant. A while ago, I already told you that a salad is a salad, but a salad with herbs is immediately something much better:...
January 9^th 202115 K4.9