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Sauce

White Wine Sauce

A sauce made with sugar, cornstarch, lemon, egg yolks, white wine, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

White Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix sugar, cornstarch, lemon rind, lemon juice, and egg yolks.

  2. Add white wine and place the saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture reaches a boiling point.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

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 + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook and add richness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in at the end to lighten the sauce's texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.
White wine
Provides the liquid base and adds acidity and aroma.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until boiling. Egg yolks can curdle and scramble if overheated or left unstirred, and cornstarch needs to reach a boil to reach full thickness. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and prevents lumps and scorching on the pan bottom.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, white wine. 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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