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Sauce

Plain Brandy Sauce

A light sauce made with corn starch, sugar, butter, boiling water, egg, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plain Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the corn starch or flour in a little water.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture, then add the sugar and butter.

  3. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten yolk of the egg.

  5. Strain through a wire sieve and add the brandy.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, fold in the beaten egg white until frothy.

  2. 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.

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. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch or flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the brandy.
Egg
The yolk enriches and thickens the sauce; the whipped white adds lightness.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a sharp, warm flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so adding it to a very hot sauce can scramble it into lumps. Removing the pan from the heat first lets it blend smoothly into the sauce.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, butter, egg, brandy. 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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