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Dessert

Creamy Sauce

A sweet creamy sauce made with sugar, eggs, milk, cream, and optionally rice or tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Johnson, Vt. Congregational church. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,354 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the syrup meringue

  1. Boil 1 cupful sugar and 1 cupful water for 10 or 15 minutes or until a thick syrup is formed.

  2. Pour the syrup in a fine stream onto the white of the egg beaten till frothy, not dry.

  3. Set into a dish of ice water and beat till cold.

  4. Fold in a cupful of whipped cream.

  5. Flavor to taste.

Make the rice and tapioca

  1. Boil one cup rice in new milk until soft.

  2. Sweeten with white sugar.

  3. Soak 2/3 cupful tapioca in 1 cupful milk overnight.

  4. Take the rest of a quart of milk and scald, add yolks of 3 eggs, tapioca and 1 cupful sugar.

  5. Boil until it thickens.

  6. Add to this 1 tablespoonful rich cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. When done, pile it high on a dish.

  2. When cold, lay on it in places square lumps of jelly or preserved fruit.

  3. Beat the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth, sweeten, and flavor with vanilla.

  4. Drop frosting in spoonfuls over the rice, giving the form of a rock of snow.

  5. When done, whisk the whites of eggs well beaten and flavor.

By Johnson, Vt. Congregational church. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Rice + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,354 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + eggtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together88,465 recipes

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

  4. Cream + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together29,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together77,855 recipes

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

Sugar and milk share little aroma chemistry, yet 77,855 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Eggs
Whipped whites give the frothy structure that holds the dish's airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and the custard and helps the frothy whites hold their shape.
Rice
Cooked soft in milk, it forms the body of the dish.
Tapioca
Thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving body to the custard.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, soft texture when folded in.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup onto the egg white. The syrup must be hot and poured in a fine stream while the white is beaten, so it cooks and stabilises the foam. Pouring too fast or into dry whites can collapse the froth.

“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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