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Dessert

Snow Sauce

A sauce made by creaming butter and sugar, adding egg yolk, and heating over steam, finished with beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg yolk and stir well.

Warm and thicken

  1. Place the bowl over a kettle of steaming water or in a basin of hot water.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of hot water, stir well, then add the next tablespoon after a minute.

  3. Repeat with the final tablespoon, allowing a minute between additions.

  4. If the sugar isn't dissolved, keep the bowl in the steam until the sauce is syrupy.

  5. Remove from heat and pour into a sauce boat.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff and lay it on top of the sauce.

  2. Stir the egg white into the sauce 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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, once dissolved, gives it a syrupy consistency.
Egg
Yolk emulsifies and thickens the sauce; stiffly beaten white lightens its texture.

The step that matters

Adding the hot water gradually over the steam. Adding the water a tablespoon at a time with a pause lets the egg yolk and butter emulsify smoothly instead of curdling. Gentle, steady heat then thickens the sauce evenly without scrambling the egg.

“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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