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Mad Madeira Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, pickled lemon, Madeira wine, and nutmeg, served with fish, boiled meat, or fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mad Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour to make a roux.

  3. Add the chopped pickled lemon and cook for a minute.

  4. Pour in the Madeira wine and stir until thickened.

  5. Season with nutmeg and serve with fish, boiled meat, or fowl.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Pickled lemon
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aroma, and its liquid thickens the sauce as it reduces.

The step that matters

Pour in the Madeira wine and stir until thickened. Adding liquid to a roux too quickly or without stirring can cause lumps. Stirring while the liquid goes in lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

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