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Sauce

Golden Sauce

A sauce made from butter, sugar, fruit juice, mace, and egg yolks, thickened over a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Golden Sauce

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 ↓

Golden Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Place the mixture over hot water and stir until it becomes liquid.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, mace, and fruit juice, and stir until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + sugartop 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).

  4. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Sugar + macetop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,096 recipes

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy body to the sauce.
Light-brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat, giving it a creamy texture.
Fruit juice
Adds acidity and fruity flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring over hot water until it thickens. Egg yolks set when heated, but too much heat can scramble them into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring over hot water, not direct heat, lets the yolks thicken the sauce evenly and smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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