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Sauce

Egg Sauce

A sweet sauce made from egg whites, sugar, cream, and mashed berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. In a bowl, combine the sugar and cream.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Add the mashed berries and mix until well 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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Beaten into stiff foam that lightens the sauce and gives it an airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilise the beaten egg white foam.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, softer mouthfeel.
Berries
Provide fruit flavour, natural acidity and colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, so the sauce turns dense instead of light.

“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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