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Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A light, foamy sauce made with butter, sugar, egg yolk, boiling water, egg whites, 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 base

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

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

  3. Stir in the boiling water.

Fold and serve

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites 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

Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, creating the light, foamy structure of the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilize the foam so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the base.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the base into a smooth mixture.
Boiling water
Adds moisture and helps dissolve the sugar into the base.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped. Stirring them vigorously knocks out the air, so the sauce loses its foamy lightness. Fold slowly with a spatula, cutting through and turning the mixture over.

“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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