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Dessert

Foam Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, butter, flour, hot water, boiling water, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Foam Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat together sugar, butter, and flour until light.

  2. Add hot water gradually while continuing to beat.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, slowly mix in boiling water while beating continuously.

  2. For a brandy sauce, stir in brandy just before serving.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the sauce its light, foamy texture and rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Beats with the butter to create the airy structure and provides sweetness.
Flour
Helps stabilize the creamed mixture so the foam holds its body.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, spirited flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Beating in the hot and boiling water. Water must be added gradually while beating, so the fat and sugar emulsify and aerate instead of separating. Adding it all at once can deflate the foam and leave the sauce loose or greasy.

“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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