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Dessert

Foaming Sauce

A sweet, foamy sauce made with butter, sugar, egg whites, vanilla, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Foaming Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Add the egg whites (do not beat them) and stir well.

  3. Once the mixture is smooth, add the boiling water.

Heat and finish

  1. Place the mixture in a double boiler and heat it.

  2. Stir until smooth and then add the vanilla.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps give the sauce its texture.
Egg whites
Add protein that thickens and sets as the sauce heats.
Boiling water
Adds moisture and helps dissolve the sugar into a loose sauce.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and a rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Heating in the double boiler. Egg whites can scramble and turn grainy if they get too hot too quickly. Gentle, indirect heat from a double boiler, with constant stirring, lets the mixture thicken smoothly.

“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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