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Sauce

Butterless Sauce

A sweet, custard-like sauce made from milk, powdered sugar, eggs, and flavoring, without butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Butterless Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Place the milk in a pan over boiling water.

  2. When scalding, add the powdered sugar mixed with the egg yolks.

  3. Stir until thick like boiled custard, then remove from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cool, add your chosen flavoring.

  2. Just before serving, gently mix in the well-beaten egg whites.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a custard when heated with the yolks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it body and richness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves easily into the warm milk mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in at the end to add lightness and airiness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir until thick like boiled custard, then remove from heat.. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, and if they get too hot they can curdle or scramble. Removing the pan once thick protects the smooth texture.

“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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