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Dessert

Foamy Sauce

A sweet, foamy sauce made with butter, powdered sugar, sherry, vanilla, boiling water, and whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Foamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the softened butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and cream again until smooth.

  3. Gradually work in the sherry and vanilla extract.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the boiling water and the whipped egg white.

  5. Beat the mixture until light and foamy.

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. Sherry + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to form a smooth base that carries the sauce's richness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Egg white
Whipped to trap air, giving the sauce its light, foamy texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, flavouring the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg white and boiling water. Stirring these in just before serving keeps the whipped egg white from deflating. Beating the mixture afterward incorporates air, which is what makes the sauce light and foamy.

“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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