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Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A light, foamy sauce made with butter, sugar, egg yolk, boiling water, egg white, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Foamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and yolk of the egg, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg white and flavoring.

  2. Beat the mixture until foamy and serve.

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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the sauce smoothly.
Boiling water
Loosens the mixture and helps dissolve the sugar.
Egg white
Traps air when beaten, giving the sauce its light, foamy texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg white. Beaten egg white is a foam of trapped air bubbles. Vigorous stirring pops those bubbles and deflates the mixture, so it should be folded in gently to keep the sauce light.

“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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