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Claret Sauce

A sauce made from eggs, claret wine, lemon rind, sugar, and cinnamon, whisked over low heat and poured over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Claret Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Whisk the eggs thoroughly.

  2. Combine the eggs with claret in a saucepan.

  3. Add lemon rind, sugar, and cinnamon.

  4. Whisk the mixture over low heat until well frothed.

Serve

  1. When it is about to boil, pour it over the pudding.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat, giving it body.
Claret
Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce its wine flavour and acidity.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the wine.
Lemon rind
Adds fragrant citrus aroma from the oils in the peel.

The step that matters

Whisk over low heat and do not let it boil. Egg proteins thicken as they warm, but too much heat makes them tighten and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy and thin. Keeping the heat low and whisking constantly lets the sauce thicken smoothly and become frothy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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