Skip to main content
Dessert

German Sauce

A creamy sauce made from hock or sherry, sugar, lemon juice, and eggs, served over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
German Sauce

Why it works: Sherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

German Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bain-marie, combine hock or sherry, sugar, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat until hot but not boiling.

  3. Pour the mixture over the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and stir well.

  4. Return the mixture to the bain-marie and whisk into a creamy froth over the heat.

Serve

  1. Pour over the pudding immediately before serving.

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. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce into a creamy custard as they gently cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the wine and lemon.
Hock or sherry
Provides the wine flavour and acidity that gives the sauce its character.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the bain-marie and whisk into a creamy froth over the heat. Egg yolks set when overheated and will curdle or scramble. Gentle, moving heat in the bain-marie thickens the sauce smoothly while keeping it foamy and pourable.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes