Name: Wine Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon grape jelly; 2 tablespoons sherry wine; 4 drops lemon juice

Why it works: Grape and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 819 recipes. Both carry 1-p-menthene-8-thiol, which smells grapefruit. The science ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

1 tablespoon grape jelly
2 tablespoons sherry wine
4 drops lemon juice

Directions

Melt the grape jelly in a small saucepan.
Add the sherry wine and lemon juice.
Stir well 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.

Grape + winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together819 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-p-menthene-8-thiol (grapefruit).
Grape + sherrytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together229 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,412 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,273 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Grape jelly: Provides sweetness and body as it melts into the sauce.
Sherry wine: Adds acidity and a fruity, aromatic depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.