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Sauce

Butterless Sauce

A sweet, custard-like sauce made from milk, powdered sugar, egg yolks, and beaten egg whites, flavored to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Butterless Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Place 2 cups of milk in a pan of boiling water.

  2. When scalding, add 1 cup of powdered sugar mixed with 2 egg yolks.

  3. Stir until thick like boiled custard.

Flavor and serve

  1. When cool, add your choice of flavoring.

  2. Just before serving, gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard thickens and carries the flavor.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the hot milk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Folded in at the end, they add lightness and airy texture.

The step that matters

Stir until thick like boiled custard. Egg yolks thicken by setting under gentle heat. If the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, the yolks can curdle or scorch, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth 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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