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Sauce

Wine Sauce

A sauce made with butter, sugar, wine, water, nutmeg, sweet cream, egg yolks, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Wine Sauce

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine sauce base

  1. Beat softened butter and sugar together until frothy.

  2. Boil wine and water together.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the sugar and butter mixture while stirring quickly.

  4. Add nutmeg to taste.

  5. Stir in sweet cream after the wine mixture.

Make the egg yolk mixture

  1. Beat egg yolks with brown sugar in a separate bowl and mix thoroughly.

  2. Heat the egg yolk mixture on the stove.

  3. Stir until it thickens.

  4. Add the wine.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps the butter whip into a light, frothy base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and add richness and body.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the finished sauce.
Wine
Contributes acidity and a fruity aroma that balances the sweetness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor to the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Heat the egg yolk mixture and stir until it thickens. Egg yolk proteins set with heat, so the mixture thickens gently when stirred over moderate heat. If it gets too hot or is left unstirred, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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