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Sauce

Rich Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, lemon rind, brandy, clarified butter, and sherry, served over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Rich Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl by the fire, combine the sugar and lemon rind.

  2. Pour 1 tablespoon of brandy and the clarified butter over the sugar, then stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Add the remaining tablespoon of brandy and the sherry, and stir for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the pudding or serve in a tureen.

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. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Provides sweetness and dissolves into the butter and spirits to give the sauce body.
Clarified butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warming alcohol note that carries the other flavors.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavor, rounding out the sweetness and fat.

The step that matters

Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Undissolved sugar leaves a gritty texture. Stirring the sugar into the warm butter and brandy helps it dissolve fully, so the sauce turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, butter, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, butter, sherry. 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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