Skip to main content
Sauce

Madeira Sauce

A sauce made from Espagnole sauce, cayenne pepper, liquid glaze, salt, and Madeira wine, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and madeira wine work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 230 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the Espagnole sauce, cayenne pepper, liquid glaze, salt, and Madeira wine in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce and reheat before serving.

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. Sauce + madeira winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + madeira winetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

Espagnole sauce
Forms the sauce's base, giving it body and a rich savoury foundation.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of sweetness and acidity that lift the sauce.
Liquid glaze
Adds concentrated meaty flavour and a glossy finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for 15 minutes. Boiling reduces the liquid, concentrating flavour and thickening the sauce. Boiling too long can make it overly thick and intensely flavoured, so check its consistency and taste before straining and reheating.

“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.

More madeira sauce recipes

Iced 3 See all 27 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes