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Sauce

Brandied Peach Sauce

A sweet sauce made from brandied peach liquor, butter, powdered sugar, arrowroot, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brandied Peach Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter with the powdered sugar.

  2. Pour in the liquor from the brandied peaches and heat in a covered saucepan to prevent evaporation.

Thicken and serve

  1. Stir together and add the arrowroot mixed with a little cold water.

  2. Place the mixture in boiling water and cover until scalding hot.

  3. Stir for three minutes and serve.

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. Peach + arrowroottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves easily into the butter.
Liquor from brandied peaches
Provides the liquid base and the brandy and fruit flavour.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated, giving a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot. Arrowroot must be mixed with cold water first so it disperses without clumping. Its starch only thickens the sauce once it is heated, so it needs to be stirred in evenly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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