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Wine Sauce

A sauce made by boiling sugar with water, adding butter, wine, nutmeg, and optional variations with brown sugar and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 the sugar in a little water.

  2. Boil until nearly candied.

  3. Add the butter just before removing from heat.

  4. Stir in wine and nutmeg to taste.

Make the larger pudding sauce

  1. For a larger pudding, melt the butter, sugar, and Madeira wine together in a stewpan.

  2. Add a little water to the stewpan.

  3. Let it boil.

  4. Melt the butter with a little flour.

  5. Stir the melted butter and flour into the boiling water quickly.

  6. Add the sugar.

  7. Add the wine.

  8. Let it simmer on the fire for a short time.

  9. Grate nutmeg on it when serving.

Make the egg yolk variation

  1. For another variation, cream the butter with the egg yolks and brown sugar.

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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy body to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, when boiled, thickens and caramelizes it.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it set into a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when stirred into boiling water.
Madeira wine
Adds aroma and a sharp, fortified wine flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the melted butter and flour into the boiling water quickly. Adding the butter and flour mixture to boiling liquid and stirring quickly disperses the flour evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, thickened 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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