Cream as a Sauce

• Cream makes a natural foundation for many sauces, because it's already a serviceable sauce when you pour it into your pan. It contains rich butterfat and plentiful proteins, perfectly blended into a single silky-smooth liquid. To use it on your meats or vegetables, all that's needed is to concentrate it to the correct consistency and add flavorings. Some flavorings, such as vanilla beans, are best infused into the cream as it simmers. Others, including peppercorns, onions and bay leaves, are usually infused into broth or wine and then strained from the mixture before being added to the cream.

A la Minute

• Many sauces with wine and heavy cream are prepared "a la minute," a French kitchen term meaning the sauce is prepared as needed. Typically, you'll make the sauce in the same pan you used to cook your piece of meat, fish or poultry. Remove the meat and set it aside to rest, then add shallots or other aromatic ingredients to the pan. Pour in your wine -- and sometimes broth -- and use it to stir up and dissolve the flavorful browning from the pan. Simmer the wine until it's reduced to a small, syrupy spoonful, then add the cream. When it's thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon, strain out the solids and spoon the sauce over your meat.

Prepared Sauces

• Other sauces are often prepared in advance. For example, you might concentrate Marsala, Madeira or port wine, add a small amount of veal or chicken stock, and then heavy cream. Once it's reduced and thickened, the sauce can be chilled and reheated later to accompany chicken, pork or veal. A similar process using white wine and fish or chicken broth produces a simple sauce for fish or poultry, while beef or lamb broth and red wine can make an elegant sauce for red meats. In each case, the sauce can be customized to the meal by adding herbs or spices to your preference.

Dessert Sauces

• Many dessert sauces are also based on wine and heavy cream, though the end result is very different. The wines are typically fortified dessert wines such as Marsala, port and Madeira, and the sauces are sweetened. Instead of reducing the cream to a thick consistency, dessert sauces are typically thickened with a custard technique. This means the wine and sugar are whisked into egg yolks, then cream is added and the sauce is gently heated until it thickens. Lighter wines such as champagne can also be used, but they must be reduced until their flavors are highly concentrated.