Name: Egg Sauce
Ingredients: 1 piece of butter (size of an egg); ½ cup confectioner's sugar; 1 egg (not beaten); 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

1 piece of butter (size of an egg)
½ cup confectioner's sugar
1 egg (not beaten)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Cream the butter with the confectioner's sugar until smooth.
Stir in the unbeaten egg.
Add the vanilla extract and mix well.

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.

Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,050 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter: Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar gives the sauce a smooth, light body.
Confectioner's sugar: Provides sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the butter for a fine, even texture.
Egg: Adds body and richness, helping bind the butter and sugar into a cohesive sauce.
Vanilla extract: Adds a warm aroma that rounds out the sweetness of the sugar.

“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.