Skip to main content
Sauce

Foam Sauce

A sweet sauce made from butter, sugar, eggs, and sherry, finished with folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Foam Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks and steam in a double boiler until well mixed and hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and the sherry, then beat thoroughly.

  2. Optionally, replace sherry with 1 tablespoon of brandy.

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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps cream the butter into a smooth base.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce when gently heated, and whipped whites add a light, airy foam.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a mellow, slightly acidic flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives the sauce its foam. Folding them in gently and serving promptly keeps that air, because overmixing or waiting lets the foam collapse and the sauce turn dense and flat.

“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.

More foam sauce recipes

Cobalt 3 See all 44 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes