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Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A light, airy sauce made with butter, powdered sugar, wine, boiling water, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Foamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and wine, mixing well.

  3. Just before serving, add the boiling water and mix thoroughly.

Foam and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the beaten egg white into the sauce.

  3. Beat the mixture with a Dover beater until light and foamy.

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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to form a rich, smooth base for the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Egg white
Beaten to stiff peaks, it traps air and gives the sauce its light, foamy texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Stirring vigorously knocks out the air trapped in the whipped egg white, so the sauce turns dense instead of light and foamy. Fold gently to keep the foam.

“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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