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Sauce

Foaming Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, butter, wine or fruit juice, boiling water, and egg white that foams when beaten.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup 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 ↓

Foaming Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the sugar and butter together until creamy.

  2. Add the wine or fruit juice (or fruit syrup) and mix well.

Finish and foam

  1. At serving time, stir in the boiling water.

  2. Add the beaten egg white and beat until the sauce foams.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 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

Egg white
Traps air when beaten, creating the light foam that gives the sauce its texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the butter to give the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and a creamy base that the sugar is beaten into.
Wine or fruit juice
Adds acidity and fruity flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until the sauce foams. The egg white must be beaten in and whipped until the sauce foams, because the proteins in the white unfold and trap air to create the light 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.

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