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Dessert

Red Wine Sauce

A steamed cake made with sugar, butter, egg whites, flour, brandy, raisins, and served with a lemon and red wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Red Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg whites and mix until well combined.

  3. Mix in the baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the flour, milk, brandy, and raisins.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into molds and steam for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Serve with a sauce made from lemon and red wine, or raspberry vinegar.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift as they set during steaming, binding the cake together.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it cooks and sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness, chew and moisture to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour, milk, brandy, and raisins.. Adding the flour gradually and mixing gently keeps the batter smooth and prevents overworking, which would make gluten develop and the cake tough and dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, brandy, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, brandy, raisin. 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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