Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Snow Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce base
Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.
Add the egg yolk and stir well.
Place the bowl over a kettle of simmering water or in a basin of hot water.
Add 1 tablespoon of hot water, stir well, then add the next tablespoon after a minute.
Repeat with the final tablespoon, allowing a minute between additions.
If the sugar isn't dissolved, keep the bowl in the steam until the sauce resembles golden syrup.
Finish and serve
Remove from heat and pour into a sauce boat.
Beat the egg white until stiff and lay it on top of the sauce.
Serve immediately, stirring the egg white into the sauce at the table.
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.
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Sweetens the sauce and, dissolved in the warm butter and water, gives it a smooth, syrupy body.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the sauce.
- Egg
- Yolk thickens the sauce as it gently heats, and the whipped white adds a light, airy topping.
- Hot water
- Loosens the mixture and helps the sugar dissolve gradually without scrambling the egg.
The step that matters
Adding the hot water gradually over the steam. Adding water a tablespoon at a time, with gentle heat from the steam, lets the egg yolk warm slowly and thicken smoothly. Adding too much liquid or too much heat at once can curdle the egg and leave the sugar grainy.
“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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