Skip to main content
Dessert

Ice Cream Sauce

A sweet sauce made from butter, egg yolk, powdered sugar, sherry, egg whites, lemon extract, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sherry and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Ice Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and the egg yolk.

  3. Stir in the sherry last.

Make the topping

  1. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add sugar and lemon extract to the whipped whites.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the butter mixture with the whipped whites and set in a cool place to thicken.

  2. Serve in a glass dish.

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. Sherry + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creamed fat that gives the sauce its rich body and smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam that adds lightness and a fluffy topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the butter, adding sweetness and a smooth consistency.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and emulsifying power that helps bind the butter and sugar.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must form stable peaks to hold air. Under-whipped whites collapse into the sauce, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry, so the topping stays light and cohesive.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, sherry, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, sherry, vanilla. 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.

More ice cream sauce recipes

Maple 4

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes