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Sauce

German Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, castor sugar, and sherry, whisked into a stiff froth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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German Sauce

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 ↓

German Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the yolks of two eggs with one teaspoon of castor sugar.

  2. Add one glass of sherry.

  3. Place the saucepan over heat and whisk the mixture vigorously until it forms a stiff froth, about two minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce around the pudding immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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
Form the base of the sauce and thicken it into a stiff froth when whisked with heat.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilise the whisked yolks.
Sherry
Adds flavour and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking over heat until stiff froth. Heat cooks the egg yolks gently as they are whisked, thickening the sauce. Too little whisking leaves it thin, while too much heat can scramble the yolks into lumps.

“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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