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Sauce

Iced Madeira Sauce

A chilled sauce made from sugar syrup, orange juice, lemon juice, Madeira wine, and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Iced Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water together for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour half of the syrup into a small bowl and add orange juice, lemon juice, and Madeira.

  3. Set the mixture in a freezing mixture.

  4. Stir occasionally.

  5. Boil the remaining syrup for 5 more minutes.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Slowly beat the hot syrup into the egg whites until they begin to stiffen.

  2. Cool the mixture until the freezing mixture is stiff but can be stirred easily.

  3. Fold in the meringue.

  4. 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that gives the sauce its sweetness and body.
Egg whites
Whipped into the hot syrup to form a meringue that lightens the sauce and gives it a stiff, airy texture.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and fruity flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup.
Madeira
Adds aromatic, fortified-wine flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly beat the hot syrup into the egg whites. Pouring the syrup in slowly, while beating, lets the hot sugar syrup cook the egg white proteins gradually into a stable foam. Pouring too fast can deflate the whites or leave the meringue grainy and unstable.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg. 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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