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Sauce

Brandy Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, water, egg yolks, butter, egg whites, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,127 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil sugar and water for 15 minutes.

  2. Beat egg yolks and stir into the boiling syrup.

  3. Place the bowl in a pan of hot water and beat until it thickens.

  4. Add butter and beaten egg whites, mixing well.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in brandy and serve.

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. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, boiled with water, forms the syrup that the yolks are stirred into.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Egg whites
Beaten in at the end to lighten the sauce and add airy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavour that is stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolks into the boiling syrup. Adding yolks to very hot syrup without constant stirring can scramble them into lumps. Stirring as they go in and keeping the gentle heat of the hot-water bath helps the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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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