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Sauce

Brandy Sauce

A sweet sauce made with powdered sugar, butter, cream, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together the powdered sugar and butter.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the cream and beat until very light.

  3. Gradually stir in the brandy.

  4. Place the saucepan in a pan of hot water and stir until it comes to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a sauceboat.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, gives it a light, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a light texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and loosens the mixture into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Brandy
Contributes the main alcoholic flavour and aroma of the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the brandy. Adding the liquid a little at a time lets the creamed butter and sugar absorb it evenly. Pouring it in all at once can cause the mixture to separate and look grainy.

“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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