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Sauce

Foamy Sauce

A sweet, foamy sauce made with butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, sherry, boiling water, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Foamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until smooth.

  2. Add the vanilla extract and sherry, and beat well.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the boiling water.

  2. Add the egg white and beat until foamy.

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 + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smooth, creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly for a fine texture.
Egg white
Whipped into foam, it traps air to make the sauce light and airy.
Boiling water
Loosens the mixture and helps dissolve the sugar for a pourable sauce.
Sherry
Adds aromatic, mildly acidic flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white until foamy, then serve promptly. Egg white foam holds air through its proteins, but it slowly collapses as it stands. Overbeating can make it dry and grainy, so beat only until foamy and serve soon after.

“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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