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Dessert

Wiiste Sauce

A sweet white sauce made with white wine, lemon, cinnamon, sugar, cornstarch, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Wiiste Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine white wine, water, lemon slices, cinnamon, and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Wet cornstarch or potato flour with a little water in a small bowl, then add it to the boiling mixture while stirring constantly.

  3. Beat the egg yolks in another bowl. Gradually add the boiling wine mixture to the yolks while stirring.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir constantly until thickened.

Finish with egg whites

  1. Fold in part of the beaten egg whites, then place the remaining egg whites on top of the sauce. Sweeten the egg whites to taste.

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 + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Lemon + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

White wine
Provides acidity and aroma that flavour the sauce.
Cornstarch or potato flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to add lightness and a airy topping.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling wine mixture to the yolks. Pouring boiling liquid in too quickly or without constant stirring can scramble the egg yolks. Adding it gradually while stirring tempers the yolks so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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