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Dessert

Foamy Sauce

A sweet, thickened sauce made with egg whites, butter, sugar, cornstarch, and lemon, served over cottage pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Foamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites in a bowl until stiff.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the sugar and cornstarch; mix well.

  2. Add the boiling water to the mixture and cook until it thickens, stirring constantly.

  3. Add the juice of the lemon to the thickened mixture.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, pour the sauce into the well-beaten egg.

  2. Serve with cottage pudding.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they create the light, foamy structure of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the sauce base.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the boiling water.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sauce.
Egg
Beaten and combined with the hot sauce to add richness and body.

The step that matters

Pour the sauce into the well-beaten egg. Cornstarch sauce must be thick and hot enough to be combined gently; pouring it in slowly while beating helps prevent the egg from scrambling and keeps the foam light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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