Skip to main content
Sauce

Liquid Brandy Sauce

A sweet, citrusy sauce made with sugar, water, cloves, cinnamon, lemon rind, lemon juice, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Liquid Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add water, cloves, cinnamon, and lemon rind; bring to a boil.

  3. Strain the sauce while hot into a bowl.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and brandy.

  5. Serve warm.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Sugar
Browns to form caramel, giving the sauce its depth of flavour and colour.
Brandy
Adds alcohol-based aroma and a warm, sharp flavour that carries the spices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the caramel.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aromatic flavour as it steeps in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar. Sugar that is browned too little tastes flat, while sugar that goes too far turns bitter. Watch it closely over medium heat so it reaches a deep amber before the water is added.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, brandy. 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 brandy sauce recipes

Lemon 3Peach 3 See all 90 →

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes