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Sauce

Wine Sauce for Cold Meats

A sauce made from wine, jelly, butter, sugar, and allspice, cooked until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Wine Sauce for Cold Meats

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine wine, jelly, butter, sugar, and allspice in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens.

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. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Wine + allspicetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together749 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Butter + allspicetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,325 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

Wine
Provides liquid and acidity that brightens the sauce's flavour.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and body, helping the sauce thicken as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the wine.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture thickens. Heat reduces the liquid and concentrates the sugars and pectin from the jelly, so the sauce thickens. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it sticky or cause the butter to separate.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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