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Golden Sauce

A thickened sauce made from eggs, sugar, sherry, and lemon juice, cooked over a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Golden 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 ↓

Golden Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whole egg with the sugar until creamy.

  2. Place the saucepan in a kettle of boiling water over heat.

  3. While beating the eggs, gradually pour in the sherry.

  4. Continue stirring until the sauce thickens to a cream.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add the strained lemon juice.

  2. 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.

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. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 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

Egg yolks
Provide richness and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Whole egg
Adds structure and body, helping the sauce thicken into a cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten eggs.
Sherry
Adds aromatic flavour and thins the eggs so they blend smoothly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, sweet sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the heat gentle while stirring. Eggs thicken as their proteins set, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Setting the pan in a boiling water bath and stirring constantly lets the sauce thicken gradually and evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, sherry. 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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