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Forest-city Rum Sauce

A sweet sauce made with egg yolks, powdered sugar, nutmeg, egg whites, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and rum work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 646 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Forest-city Rum Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolks, powdered sugar, and nutmeg until smooth.

  2. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Just before serving, gently mix the whipped egg whites with the additional powdered sugar.

  4. Fold in the yolk mixture, then add the rum to taste.

  5. 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. Nutmeg + rumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and give it a smooth, custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and airy volume to the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves easily into the yolks and whites.
Old jamaica rum
Adds the main aroma and a warm, boozy flavor.

The step that matters

Fold in the yolk mixture gently. Whipped egg whites lose their air if overmixed or stirred vigorously, so the sauce becomes dense and flat. Gentle folding keeps the foam intact, preserving the light texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, rum):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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