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Sauce

Wine Sauce

A sweet wine sauce made with butter, flour, boiling water, sugar, egg white, Madeira wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Wine Sauce

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Stir this mixture into the boiling water.

  3. Add enough sugar to make it sweet.

  4. Let it boil for a few minutes.

  5. Gradually add the beaten egg white.

  6. Stir in the Madeira wine.

  7. Grate nutmeg over the sauce and serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it mixes with butter and simmers in the boiling water.
Egg white
Adds body and a light, frothy texture to the sauce when beaten and stirred in.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic depth and a mild acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the boiling water. Adding the mixture to boiling liquid while stirring disperses the flour evenly and starch granules swell to thicken the sauce. Lumps form if the flour is not blended in smoothly first.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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