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Dessert

Sherry Sauce

A dessert sauce made by beating egg yolks and whites with powdered sugar, flavored with sherry or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sherry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of two eggs until thick or stiff.

  2. Gradually add ½ cup powdered sugar while beating.

  3. Beat the whites of two eggs until stiff.

  4. Gradually add ½ cup powdered sugar while beating.

  5. Combine both mixtures and flavor with 3 tablespoons of sherry wine or 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + sherrytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce, adding richness and body to the mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they lighten the sauce and give it an airy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves easily into the beaten eggs.

The step that matters

Combine both mixtures. Fold gently so the whipped whites keep their air. Stirring or beating hard deflates the foam and leaves the sauce dense and flat.

“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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