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Sauce

Sabayon Sauce Au Mad^re

A light custard-like sauce made with egg yolks, powdered sugar, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sabayon Sauce Au Mad^re

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine egg yolks and powdered sugar.

  2. Place on a hot stove and whisk for 2 minutes.

  3. Gradually add Madeira wine while stirring continuously for 2 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Remove from heat and strain through a fine sieve 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + madeira winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + madeira winetop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together445 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken as they heat, giving the sauce its body and a smooth, custard-like texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves quickly into the yolks.
Madeira wine
Adds its fortified wine flavor and aroma and thins the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking over heat. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if they get too hot they can scramble. Constant whisking spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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