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Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A light sauce made with eggs, powdered sugar, heavy cream, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Foamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Lightly whip the heavy cream and fold it into the egg mixture.

  4. Add the sherry and mix everything together until well combined.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped with sugar to form a light, creamy base that holds air and gives body to the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the eggs, adding body to the foam.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and fat, and its whipped air lightens the texture of the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic flavor that balances the sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream gently. Whipped cream holds air that gives the sauce its foamy lightness. Stirring or beating it hard deflates the bubbles, so the sauce turns dense and loses volume.

“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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