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Sauce

Foaming Sauce

A sauce made by dissolving sugar, boiling, adding wine, folding in egg whites, and serving immediately.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Foaming Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the sugar in a little water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir in the wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

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

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

  2. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Wine + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a syrup that gives the sauce its sweetness and body.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma, balancing the sweetness of the sugar syrup.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the sauce its light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the air bubbles trapped in the egg whites. Stirring or beating them further deflates the foam, so the sauce loses its lightness.

“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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