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Sauce

Egg Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, butter, egg, hot water, and flavored with wine or other flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the sugar, butter, and egg.

  2. Beat the mixture until well combined.

  3. Gradually add hot water until the desired consistency is reached.

  4. Flavor with wine or any preferred flavoring.

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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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 bulk, and helps give the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow mouthfeel.
Egg
Emulsifies with the butter and sugar, helping the sauce become smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Gradually add hot water. Adding the hot water slowly lets the butter and egg blend into a smooth emulsion instead of separating or curdling. Add it in small amounts and stop once the consistency is right.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, wine. 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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