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Dessert

Foam Sauce

A sauce made from sugar, eggs, cold water, and butter, flavored to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Foam Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a heatproof bowl, combine sugar, eggs, and cold water.

  2. Place the bowl over a pot of boiling water.

  3. Stir continuously until the mixture is well cooked.

  4. Transfer the mixture over the butter in a bowl.

  5. Add flavoring to taste.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Cooked gently over steam, the eggs thicken the mixture into a light, foamy sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilise the mixture as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir continuously over the boiling water. Eggs can scramble if they overheat or sit still. Constant stirring over gentle steam heats them evenly so they thicken smoothly into a foamy sauce.

“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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