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Sauce

Wine Madeira Sauce

A sauce made with flour, diced preserved green lemon, Madeira wine, consomme, butter, salt, nutmeg, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Wine Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix flour and diced lemon with Madeira wine and consomme.

  2. Add butter, salt, and nutmeg, then bring to a boil.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat, stir in cheese until melted.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Madeira wine
Adds sweet, nutty depth that forms the flavour base of the sauce.
Consomme
Supplies the savoury stock base that makes up the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy finish.
Preserved green lemon
Adds sharp acidity and bright aroma to balance the richness.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding savoury richness and body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cheese off the heat. Cheese added to a boiling sauce can turn grainy or greasy, because high heat tightens its proteins and separates its fat. Removing the pan from heat first lets the cheese melt smoothly into the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, madeira wine, butter, nutmeg, cheese. 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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