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Dessert

Plain Sauce

A sauce made by mixing nut butter, sugar, eggs, and boiling water to create a thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Plain Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub together the nut butter and sugar.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs.

  3. Just before serving, add enough boiling water to make a thick cream.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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

Nut butter
Provides fat and rich flavour that gives the sauce its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when rubbed with the butter, helps give the sauce a smooth texture.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the sauce as they are beaten in.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Water must be added just before serving so the sauce reaches a thick, creamy consistency. Adding it too early or too much can thin the sauce and cause it to lose body as it sits.

“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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