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Brandy Sauce for Plum Pudding

A sweet sauce made with sugar, water, butter, spices, lemon juice, and brandy, used to serve plum pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Brandy Sauce for Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine sugar, water, butter, and whole spices in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain through a fine strainer.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add lemon juice and brandy, stirring gently.

  2. Do not boil after adding the brandy to prevent evaporation.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup base of the sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth; its alcohol evaporates if the sauce is boiled after it is added.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the rich spirit.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the brandy. Alcohol evaporates quickly at boiling temperatures, so boiling once the brandy is in drives off its aroma and flavour and can make the sauce taste flat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, clove, cinnamon, allspice, brandy, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, clove, cinnamon, allspice, brandy, lemon. 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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