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Sauce

German Foam Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, white wine, lemon peel, and sugar, whisked into a foam and heated until boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

German Foam Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Select a pudding dish and add the egg yolks.

  2. Measure 2 ½ cups of white wine and add it to the dish.

  3. Add lemon peel and sugar to taste.

  4. Stir the mixture into a foam using a whisk.

  5. Place the dish over heat and stir constantly until it boils.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately for best results.

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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, creamy body as they set with heat.
White wine
Provides the liquid base and acidity that gives the sauce its bright flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring over heat until it boils. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if the heat is too high or stirring stops, they can scramble and curdle. Constant stirring keeps the mixture smooth and evenly heated.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, white wine, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, white wine, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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