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Sauce

Wine Sauce

A sauce made with sugar, butter, eggs, wine or rum, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Wine Sauce

Why it works: Butter and wine 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix sugar and butter in a saucepan and heat gently.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir them into the mixture.

  3. Cook on low heat for a few more minutes until combined.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and let cool.

  2. Add wine or rum and nutmeg to taste.

  3. Heat the sauce until hot 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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Wine or rum
Adds flavour and aroma to the finished sauce.
Nutmeg
Adds warm aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten eggs into the mixture and cook on low heat. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can curdle or scramble if the mixture gets too hot. Stirring the eggs in and keeping the heat low lets the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

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