Skip to main content
Main

Tart Claret Sauce

A tart sauce made with butter, sugar, claret wine, and arrowroot or cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Tart Claret Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Heat the claret in a saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir the arrowroot or cornstarch into the heated claret and cook for 1 minute.

  2. Gradually beat the claret mixture into the creamed butter and sugar.

Set and hold

  1. For hard sauce, refrigerate until firm.

  2. For liquid sauce, place in a bowl over boiling water and cover until needed.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Butter + arrowroottop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 body to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, adds body.
Claret
Provides the main liquid and the wine flavour and acidity.
Arrowroot or cornstarch
Thickens the claret as it heats, giving the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Cooking the starch into the claret. Arrowroot or cornstarch only thickens fully when heated, so cooking it in the claret for the full minute lets the starch swell. Without this, the sauce stays thin or may taste starchy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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

You might also like

Arrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes