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Wine Sauce

A sweet and tangy sauce made with butter, powdered sugar, lemon peel, and sherry.

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

Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and grated lemon peel.

  3. Gradually stir in the sherry.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir until the sauce nearly boils and serve immediately.

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. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted butter gives the sauce its richness, body and smooth, fatty mouthfeel.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into warm butter, adding sweetness without grittiness.
Lemon peel
Grated peel adds bright citrus aroma and a little zest to balance the sweetness.
Sherry
Adds its wine flavour and mild acidity, deepening the sauce's taste.

The step that matters

Stir until the sauce nearly boils. Heat must be high enough to warm the sauce through and dissolve the sugar, but boiling can split the butter and drive off the sherry's aroma. Stop just short of a boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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