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 ↓
Hard Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Beat the butter until creamy.
Gradually add the powdered sugar and continue beating until creamy.
Flavor with the desired flavoring.
Beat the egg white until stiff and fold it into the butter and sugar mixture.
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.
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Provides fat and richness, and creaming it creates the smooth, spreadable body of the sauce.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter, giving it a fine texture.
- Egg white
- Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, it lightens the texture and makes the sauce fluffy.
The step that matters
Folding in the stiff egg white. Fold gently so the whipped foam keeps its air. Stirring vigorously deflates the egg white and makes the sauce 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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