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Sauce

Wine Sauce

A sauce made with sugar, butter, wine, nutmeg, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Wine Sauce

Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Dissolve 1 pound of sugar in a little water and boil until nearly candied.

  2. Add an egg-sized lump of butter just before removing from heat.

  3. Stir in wine and nutmeg to taste.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt ½ pound of butter with 3 cups of sugar and 2 cups of Madeira wine in a saucepan with a little water.

  2. Roll the butter in a little flour.

  3. Stir it into the boiling water quickly.

  4. Add the sugar.

  5. Add the wine.

  6. Cream together ½ pound of butter with 9 tablespoons of brown sugar and 2 beaten egg yolks.

  7. Let it simmer for a short time.

  8. Grate nutmeg on top when serving.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the creamed butter and sugar mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled, builds the thick base of the sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour-rolled butter into the boiling water quickly. Adding butter to boiling liquid must be done fast and stirred well so it emulsifies smoothly instead of separating into greasy pools. Flour coating helps it disperse and thicken the sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter, wine, madeira wine, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, wine, madeira wine, flour. 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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