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Sauce

Brandy Sauce

A sauce made with milk, arrowroot, sugar, egg yolk, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,738 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the arrowroot and milk smoothly in a small saucepan.

  2. Stir over medium heat until it boils.

  3. Add the sugar and remove from heat to cool slightly.

  4. Mix the brandy and egg yolk together.

  5. Pour the mixture into the sauce and stir until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Arrowroot + brandytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot or cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and thickens it further when stirred in.
Brandy
Adds a strong aroma and distinctive flavour to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the base liquid that the thickener sets into a sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the sauce and stir until it thickens. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets very hot liquid, so the mixture should be added gently while stirring and the sauce kept from boiling hard once the yolk is in.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootthe original
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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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