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Sauce

White Wine Sauce

A sauce made with white wine, water, lemon, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

White Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the white wine, water, sliced lemon, cloves, cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture is warm.

  3. Strain the mixture slowly into the beaten yolks of the eggs, stirring constantly to prevent curdling.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat and add richness.
Egg whites
Add lightness and airy volume when folded into the warm sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the wine and lemon.
White wine
Provides the main liquid and a bright, acidic flavor.

The step that matters

Straining the mixture into the yolks while stirring constantly. Egg yolks can scramble and curdle if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Pouring slowly while stirring gently raises their temperature evenly, so the sauce stays smooth and thickens.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Clovethe 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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