Skip to main content
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
Jump to recipe ↓

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 base

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir in the wine.

  4. Just before serving, add the boiling water and mix well.

Fold in the egg white

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

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

  3. Beat all together with a whisk 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 to give the sauce richness, body and a smooth base.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the butter for a smooth texture.
Wine
Adds flavor and aroma to the sauce.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it traps air and creates the light, foamy texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten egg white into the mixture. Stiff egg white foam holds air bubbles that make the sauce light. Vigorous or prolonged stirring pushes out that air, so the sauce turns dense and loses its 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes