Skip to main content
Main

Wine Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 sauce

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

  2. Add the butter just before removing from heat, then stir in wine and nutmeg to taste.

  3. Melt the butter, sugar, and Madeira wine together in a saucepan with a little water and bring to a boil.

  4. Mix a little flour with the melted butter and stir it into the boiling mixture quickly.

  5. Add the sugar, then the wine.

  6. Cream the butter with the egg yolks and brown sugar, then add the wine and simmer briefly.

Finish and serve

  1. Grate nutmeg over the sauce before 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
Enrich the sauce and thicken it as they cook, giving a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter mixture so the sauce becomes body and holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, when boiled, builds a syrupy base.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling mixture. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly, so mixing it with melted butter first and stirring in quickly helps the sauce thicken smoothly without lumps.

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.

More wine sauce recipes

Port 17for Puddings 13White 12Rich 10Currant 9for Venison 8 See all 178 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes