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Dessert

Foaming Sauce

A sweet sauce made from butter, sugar, egg yolks, flour or cornstarch, boiled water, and folded with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Foaming Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and add to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the flour or cornstarch.

  4. Add the boiling water.

  5. Place the mixture in a kettle of boiling water until thickened.

  6. Remove from heat.

Finish

  1. Fold in the beaten egg white and flavoring.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Creamed with the butter for sweetness and a light texture.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce as they cook in the hot water.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as the starch swells in the hot liquid.
Egg white
Folded in at the end to lighten the sauce and add airiness.

The step that matters

Place the mixture in a kettle of boiling water until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, and the starch needs heat to thicken. Heating gently and stopping once the sauce thickens keeps it smooth.

“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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