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Dessert

White Sauce

A sweet sauce made from butter, powdered sugar, and egg white, whipped and simmered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Whip the butter to a cream.

  2. Slowly add the powdered sugar while mixing.

Finish and set

  1. Incorporate the egg white without beating it.

  2. Set the mixture in boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed butter gives the sauce its rich body and smooth, spreadable texture.
Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and dissolves smoothly, so the sauce stays fine-textured rather than grainy.
Egg white
Its proteins help bind the sauce and set it gently when heated.

The step that matters

Incorporate the egg white without beating it. Beating the egg white whips air into the mixture and can make the sauce foamy and unstable. Folding it in gently keeps the texture dense and smooth, so it sets evenly when heated.

“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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