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Sauce for Apple Dumplings

A sweet sauce made from sugar, butter, cold water, and eggs, used for apple dumplings.

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 ↓

Sauce for Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix sugar, butter, cold water, and beaten egg yolks in a double boiler.

  2. Heat the mixture until warm.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

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. Sugar + buttertop 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce as they warm; folded-in whites lighten its texture.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolks gently in the double boiler. Egg yolk proteins thicken as they warm, but if the mixture gets too hot they set unevenly and curdle. Gentle, indirect heat keeps the sauce smooth and thick.

“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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