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Sauce

Ginger Sauce

A sauce made from preserved ginger, cream, and egg yolks.

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

Why it works: Cream and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Ginger Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the preserved ginger into small pieces.

  2. Add the ginger and a little of the syrup to the cream and egg yolks.

  3. Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens.

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. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,337 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth body that thickens into a sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they heat and set, giving the sauce body.
Preserved ginger
Adds the main sharp, spicy flavour and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken by gently coagulating as they heat. High heat or no stirring can curdle the mixture into grainy lumps before it becomes smooth.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. White pepperfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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.

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