Skip to main content
Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A sweet, foamy sauce made with butter, powdered sugar, egg whites, sherry wine, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 sauce

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and beat until very light.

  3. Add the egg whites one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the Sherry wine and hot water.

  5. Heat the mixture over boiling water, stirring constantly until foamy.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the sauce a light, smooth body and richness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly when beaten into the creamed butter.
Egg whites
Whipped into the mixture to trap air, creating the sauce's foamy, airy texture.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating over boiling water until foamy. Heating the egg-white mixture gently while stirring constantly lets it warm and thicken into a foam without overcooking the egg proteins into lumps or curdling. Stopping at foamy keeps the airy texture.

“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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes