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Sauce

Hard Brandy Sauce

A sweet sauce made with butter, powdered sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, mace, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hard Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until smooth.

  2. Whip in the lemon juice to lighten the mixture.

  3. Add the cinnamon and mace, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the brandy until fully combined.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and creams with the sugar to give a smooth, soft body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves finely, helping it stay smooth rather than grainy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and lightens the texture when whipped in.
Brandy
Adds liquid and a warm, distinctive aroma and flavour.
Mixed cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and powdered sugar until smooth. Beating the butter and sugar together incorporates air and dissolves the sugar finely into the fat. If the mixture is not creamed well, the sauce can stay grainy and feel heavy instead of smooth and light.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, 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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