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Sauce

Foaming Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, butter, flour, boiling water, and egg white, finished with flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Foaming Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat together sugar, butter, and flour until well combined.

  2. Stir in boiling water and let the mixture boil for a few minutes.

  3. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more water.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, pour the hot sauce over the beaten egg white.

  2. Beat well and add any desired flavoring.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Boiling water
Dissolves the sugar and loosens the flour into a pourable sauce.
Egg white
Beaten into foam, it gives the sauce its light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot sauce over the beaten egg white. The hot sauce partly cooks and sets the surface of the egg white foam, helping it hold its shape. Pour it just before serving, because the foam deflates as it stands.

“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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