Vanilla Sauce (Vanillesoße)

Apparently vanilla has been around for a long, long time, but it was the development of the New World that sent the flavoring to other parts of the world on an increasingly large scale. Vanilla is derived from the pods of a type of orchid plant... and here I thought they got it from vanilla ice cream. There are many variations to vanilla sauce recipes, but this is from Germans (Germans, broadly speaking, not just from Germany*), and it is called "Vanillesoße," or sometimes, "Vanillesauce," in German, and it is a fairly common accompaniment to desserts from German kitchens, although the English and French have the same or similar, so if Prince Harry and Meghan drop by, tell them it's "Crème Anglaise," but if Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte are your guests, says it's "Crème Française à la Vanille." 
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Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups canned milk (12 ounce can)
1 cup heavy cream
4 egg yolks
3 tablespoons sugar (for a little sweeter use "heaping" tablespoons)
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla

Place a bowl (I use a stainless steel bowl) over a pan of simmering water. The bowl should not actually touch the water. Mix the eggs and the cornstarch together, set this aside for the moment. In the bowl over the hot water, mix the milk, cream and sugar. Let the liquid heat, but do not let it actually boil. Stir well to completely dissolve the sugar. Add a tablespoon of the heated liquid to the eggs and stir immediately to mix it; repeat a couple of more times. This will help the eggs to mix in with the hot milk and cream easier, as you don't want to end up with scrambled eggs in milk and cream ... Hey! I think I just invented a new dish... scrambled eggs in milk and cream.... Wait a second, I've "fixed" this dish before, unintentionally! Gradually drizzle in small amounts of the egg, whisking constantly, until the egg/cornstarch mixture is fully added. Add the vanilla and whisk further to incorporate it into the sauce. The milk and cream should thicken as you add the egg mixture. You can, of course, adjust the cornstarch amount for a thicker or looser sauce, but the best sauce has a thickness on the order of melted ice cream. The sauce will have a slight "yellowish" tint to it from the egg yolks. This is good served warm on various desserts, but if you let it sit, cover it with plastic wrap to prevent the sauce from developing a "skin" on top. By "cover," I mean the plastic wrap should literally be in contact with the sauce.   

* Not just from Germany, but from Austria, much of Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, much of Alsace, a part of Lorraine and part of northern Italy (South Tirol/South Tyrol, Italian: Alto Adige). 

I had some vanilla sauce on sweet bread pudding...

WORD HISTORY:
Starch -This word is closely related to "stark," a word from the Germanic roots of English. It goes back to the Indo European root word "ster," which meant "rigid, stiff." The Old Germanic offshoot was "starkaz," which had much the same meaning, but also with the added notion that if something was rigid, it was "strong." This gave Old English "stearc," which meant, "stiff, rigid, hard;" thus also,  "unyielding," and also, "stern." This provided the verb form, "stearcian," meaning, "to stiffen, to harden, to become hard." This then became "starchen/sterchen" (?), and this verb produced the noun  "starche" in 1400s, before it took on the modern form. Germanic relatives also meaning "starch": German has "Stärke," Icelandic has "sterkja" (?), Swedish "stärkelse." All of the Germanic languages have relatives to the base word "stark."