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Sauce

Foaming Sauce

A sweet sauce made by boiling sugar with water, adding wine, and whisking in beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Foaming Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the sugar in a small amount of water and let it boil. Stir in the wine.

  2. Whisk in the well-beaten egg whites.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

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

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

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

  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

Sugar
Dissolves and sweetens the sauce, and its syrup gives it body.
Egg whites
Whisked in whole, they trap air and create the foamy texture.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to balance the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Whisking in the egg whites. Egg whites must be well beaten so they trap air and foam. If they are under-beaten, the sauce stays dense and loses its light texture. Serving right away keeps the foam from collapsing.

“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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