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Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A light, sweet sauce made with egg, sugar, milk, corn starch, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Foamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg until very light.

  2. Add the sugar and salt, and beat until very light again.

  3. Scald the milk and thicken it with the corn starch.

  4. Pour the boiling milk onto the egg and sugar mixture.

  5. Flavor with vanilla and stir slightly.

  6. Pour into a sauce boat.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Egg
Beaten to trap air, giving the sauce its light, foamy texture.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten egg hold its airy structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, thickened by the corn starch into a smooth sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the scalded milk so the sauce gains body.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk onto the egg and sugar mixture. Adding hot milk gradually and while stirring, rather than dumping it in, helps keep the egg from scrambling and preserves the foamy texture.

“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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