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Sauce

Madeira Sauce

A sauce made from Madeira wine, brown sauce, vinegar, salt, sugar, stock, and optional glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix Madeira with brown sauce in a saucepan.

  2. Add cayenne vinegar, salt, sugar, and brown stock.

  3. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

  4. Serve hot, adding glaze if desired.

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. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,844 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Madeira
Adds a rich, sweet, wine-based aroma and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Brown sauce
Forms the body of the sauce and provides its main savoury base.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and savouriness, rounding out the flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while boiling. Foam rises as proteins and impurities come out of the liquid during boiling. Skimming it keeps the sauce clear and prevents a cloudy, scummy texture and off flavours.

“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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