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Sauce

Wine Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, butter, boiling water, and currant wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Wine 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 ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, brown the sugar and butter together.

  2. Slowly pour the boiling water over the mixture.

  3. When ready to serve, add the currant wine.

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. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and browns into caramel flavour when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the sugar brown evenly.
Boiling water
Dissolves the browned sugar and butter into a pourable sauce.
Currant wine
Adds fruity acidity and aroma; added at the end to keep its flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar and butter. Sugar can go from amber to burnt within moments. Burnt sugar tastes bitter and cannot be rescued, so the pan needs close attention while it caramelises.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, wine. 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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