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Sauce

Ecc Foam Sauce

A sauce made from sugar, arrowroot, rum, vanilla sugar, egg whites, and yolk, whipped until frothy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ecc Foam Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, mix the loaf sugar, arrowroot, and cold water.

  2. Heat the mixture until it thickens, then remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  3. Add the rum, vanilla sugar, egg whites, and egg yolk to the saucepan.

  4. Whip the sauce briskly until frothy 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. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rum + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together728 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Whipped to trap air, giving the sauce a light, frothy foam.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps emulsify the sauce for a smooth texture.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sugar and water mixture when heated, giving the sauce body.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilise the foam.

The step that matters

Whip the sauce briskly until frothy. Whipping must be done while the sauce is still warm but cooled slightly, so the egg proteins can trap air and form a stable foam. Too much heat can scramble the egg, while under-whipping leaves the sauce flat.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum, vanilla, 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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