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Dessert

Brandy Sauce

A sweet, buttery sauce flavored with lemon, brandy, and egg whites, served hot with plum pudding or rich dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,127 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter with the powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Stir in the boiling water.

  3. Beat for two minutes over heat until hot.

  4. Quickly fold in the stiffened egg whites.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Add the brandy.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with plum pudding or any rich dumpling or fritter.

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. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fat-based body to the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the sauce and give it a airy texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, spirited flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Quickly fold in the stiffened egg whites. Folding gently keeps the whipped foam from collapsing. Overmixing or letting the sauce cool too long deflates the air that makes the sauce light.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, 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.

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