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Sauce

Champagne Sauce

A light brown sauce made with water, butter, cornstarch, salt, coloring, and hard cider or champagne cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Champagne Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter and stir until melted.

  3. Whisk in the cornstarch and salt until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat once the cornstarch is cooked.

  5. Add coloring to achieve a light brown color.

  6. Stir in the hard cider or champagne cider 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.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + cidertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Egg + cidertop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together838 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinizes.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Hard cider
Adds tangy, fruity acidity and aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Remove from heat once the cornstarch is cooked. Cornstarch thickens when its starch granules swell in hot liquid. Removing the sauce once it has thickened and turned glossy prevents overcooking, which can thin it out as starch breaks down, and avoids a pasty taste.

“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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