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Sauce

German or Custard Sauce

A custard sauce made with egg yolks, sugar, and sherry, thickened over boiling water.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks, sugar, and sherry together in a bowl.

  2. Place the mixture in a jam pot.

  3. Put the jam pot in a saucepan with boiling water.

  4. Stir over heat until the mixture begins to thicken.

Serve

  1. Serve 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.

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
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the egg yolks.
Sherry
Adds aroma and acidity, flavouring the sauce with a wine note.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until the mixture begins to thicken. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Too much heat or too little stirring can scramble them, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard. Stirring over water keeps the heat even.

“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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