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Financiers Sauce

A sauce made with sherry or Madeira, truffle essence, cayenne, and Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and truffle work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Financiers Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine sherry or Madeira, essence of truffles, and cayenne.

  2. Reduce the mixture to half its original quantity.

  3. Add a ladleful of finished Espagnole sauce and let it boil for five minutes.

  4. Pass the sauce through a tamis into a bain-marie for use.

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. Sherry + truffletop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes
  3. Sherry + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sherry or madeira
Adds wine flavour and acidity, and its sugars deepen colour as it reduces.
Essence of truffles
Adds a concentrated earthy, aromatic truffle flavour to the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it richness and thickness.

The step that matters

Reducing the wine mixture to half. Reduction concentrates flavour and removes raw alcohol sharpness. Cutting it short leaves the sauce thin and harsh, while over-reducing can make it too strong or salty once the Espagnole is added.

“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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