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Dessert

Strawberry Sauce

A sweet sauce made from strawberry syrup, corn starch, sugar, eggs, and sherry wine, thickened and folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Strawberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sauce

  1. Place the strawberry syrup in a saucepan set over boiling water.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold syrup or water and stir it into the saucepan.

  3. Stir until it boils for 2 minutes, then add the sugar.

  4. Beat the yolks with a spoonful of cold milk and stir them in.

  5. Stir until the sauce thickens, but do not let it boil after adding the yolks.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in the sherry wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites with 2 teaspoons of sugar until stiff, then fold them into the sauce.

  2. Pour the sauce into a serving dish.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Strawberry + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Strawberry + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  4. Strawberry + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Syrup + corntop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats by swelling and binding the liquid.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the sauce, while whipped whites add lightness when folded in.
Strawberry syrup
Provides the main liquid and strawberry flavour.
White granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the fruit flavour.
Sherry wine
Adds a rounded, aromatic flavour when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the yolks. Egg yolk proteins set when overheated, so boiling after they go in can curdle or scramble the sauce, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, corn, sugar, egg, sherry, wine. 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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