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Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A light, airy sauce made with butter, powdered sugar, wine or fruit juice, boiling water, and folded 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 or fruit juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the boiling water and mix well.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gently fold the beaten egg white into the mixture.

  4. 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to give the sauce richness and a smooth body.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves smoothly into the butter, adding sweetness and a fine texture.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it traps air and gives the sauce a light, foamy texture.
Wine or fruit juice
Adds acidity and flavour that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Beaten egg white is mostly air held in a protein network. Folding gently keeps that air in, while vigorous stirring would deflate it and leave the sauce dense rather than light and foamy.

“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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