Skip to main content
Sauce

Wine Sauce

A sweet wine sauce made with butter, flour, sugar, wine, nutmeg, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Wine Sauce

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour and butter together in a saucepan.

  2. Add the boiling water, sugar, and wine to the mixture.

  3. Stir well and heat until combined.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the grated nutmeg.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine's acidity.
Wine
Provides the main flavour and acidity of the sauce.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic note when added at the end.

The step that matters

Stir well and heat until combined. Flour thickens only when it is stirred into the liquid and heated enough, so stirring keeps it from clumping and lets the starch swell evenly for a smooth sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

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

More wine sauce recipes

Port 17for Puddings 13White 12Rich 10Currant 9for Venison 8 See all 178 →

You might also like

Caper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipesCurry SauceCurry Sauce59 recipes