Name: Strawberry Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; 1 cup sugar; 1 egg white, beaten; 1 cup strawberries, mashed

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 ↓

Strawberry Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg white, beaten
1 cup strawberries, mashed

Directions

Rub the butter and sugar together until creamy.
Add the beaten egg white and thoroughly mashed strawberries, then mix well until combined.

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.

Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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: Creams with sugar to form a smooth, fat-based base for the sauce.
Sugar: Sweetens the sauce and helps the butter cream into a light, smooth texture.
Egg white: Adds body and helps bind the mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Strawberries: Provide the main fruit flavor, color, and moisture to the sauce.

“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.