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Sauce

Golden Sauce

A sweet and tart sauce made from egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Golden Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Golden Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until creamy.

  2. Place the bowl in a kettle of boiling water.

  3. While beating steadily, pour in the boiling water.

  4. Continue beating until thick and foamy.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat, add lemon juice, and grate nutmeg on top.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 set gently with heat, giving it body and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilise the beaten yolks as they foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Beating while adding the boiling water. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Pouring the water in slowly while beating steadily spreads the heat evenly, so the mixture thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon. 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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