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Sauce

Foaming Sauce

A sweet sauce made with butter, powdered sugar, egg white, and sherry or vanilla, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Foaming Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar.

  3. Incorporate the well-beaten egg white.

  4. Add the sherry or vanilla and mix well.

Serve

  1. Set the bowl in a pan of boiling water and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves easily into the creamed butter.
Egg white
Its beaten proteins trap air, creating the foam and light texture.
Sherry or vanilla
Adds aromatic flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Incorporate the well-beaten egg white. Beaten egg white holds air in a foam that gives the sauce its lightness. Adding it gently and mixing only until combined helps keep that air from collapsing, so the sauce stays 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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