Skip to main content
Sauce

Brandy Sauce, No. 1

A sweet sauce made with butter, sugar, egg, sherry, brandy, and nutmeg, cooked over boiling water until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sherry and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg, Sherry wine, brandy, and nutmeg.

  4. Cook over boiling water until thick.

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. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness, and creaming it traps air for a smoother, lighter base.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps the butter cream into a smooth mixture.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it gently heats, giving it body.
Sherry wine
Adds a nutty, slightly acidic flavour that balances the sweetness.
Brandy
Adds aromatic depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over boiling water until thick. Egg proteins thicken the sauce, but high heat can scramble them into lumps. Cooking over simmering water, not direct heat, keeps the heat gentle so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

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

More brandy sauce recipes

Lemon 3Peach 3 See all 90 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes