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German Custard Sauce

A custard sauce made with egg yolks, sugar, sherry, citrus peel, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and orange work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 823 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

German Custard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, pounded sugar, sherry, orange or lemon peel, and salt.

  2. Whisk the mixture vigorously over low heat until it becomes a light, frothy custard.

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. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sherrytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Coagulate with gentle heat to thicken the sauce into a smooth custard.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilise the foam while whisking.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, lightly flavouring the custard.

The step that matters

Whisking over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Gentle heat with constant whisking lets them thicken smoothly into a custard rather than curdling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, sherry. 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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