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Sauce

Brown Sauce

A sauce made by creaming brown sugar and butter, then adding wine and heating in a pan of boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Brown Sauce

Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the brown sugar and butter together into a cream.

  2. Add the weak wine a little at a time.

  3. Just before serving, set the mixture in a pan of boiling water until 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavor, and helps give the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creams with the sugar to give a smooth texture.
Weak wine
Adds liquid and acidity, loosening the creamed mixture into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the wine gradually. 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 emulsion to split, leaving a greasy, grainy sauce.

“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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