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Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A light, airy sauce made with butter, sugar, wine, 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 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.

Whip and fold

  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. Wine + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat for a rich, smooth body and creamy texture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the butter for a silky texture.
Egg white
Whipped into stiff peaks, it traps air to give the sauce its light, foamy structure.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten egg white into the mixture. Beaten egg white is a foam of trapped air bubbles. Folding gently keeps those bubbles intact, so the sauce stays light. Vigorous stirring pops the bubbles and leaves the sauce dense.

“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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