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Sauce

Butterless Sauce

A custard-like sauce made from milk, egg yolks, sugar, and flavoring, finished with folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Butterless Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until hot.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until well combined.

  3. Slowly add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Cook the mixture over low heat until it thickens like custard.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool before adding your chosen flavoring.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, gently fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 as they cook and give it a rich, custard-like body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the egg yolks set into a smooth custard.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in at the end, they add lightness and airy volume.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilize the egg yolks while beating.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over low heat until it thickens like custard. Egg yolks set at moderate temperatures, and high heat can curdle them into lumps. Gentle heat and constant stirring give a smooth, thickened sauce.

“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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