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Sauce

Brandy Sauce

A sweet sauce flavoured with brandy and thickened with arrowroot or potato-flour, sometimes with egg yolks and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 525 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the arrowroot sauce

  1. Mix arrowroot with a little cold water to form a stiff paste.

  2. Add enough water to make a creamy sauce.

  3. Heat until thickened.

  4. Stir in Brandy before serving.

Thicken with potato-flour

  1. Mix French potato-flour with cold water.

  2. Add boiling water slowly.

  3. Boil for two minutes.

  4. Add butter, sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg until dissolved.

  5. Stir in Brandy and serve.

Make the custard

  1. Beat egg yolks with cream, sugar, and Brandy.

  2. Warm in a bain-marie for 7-8 minutes, stirring continuously.

Finish the butter sauce

  1. Beat butter and sugar to a cream.

  2. Mix in Brandy, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  3. Stir in boiling water and simmer for a few minutes before serving.

  4. Mix flour with cold water.

  5. Add boiling water and stir until thick.

  6. Add egg yolk and stir for five minutes.

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. Arrowroot + flourtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together525 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce into a glossy, smooth body as it heats.
French potato-flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in hot liquid, giving body and a smooth texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, silky mouthfeel and a rounder flavour.
Brandy
Adds aromatic, warming flavour that lifts the sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Warming the egg yolk custard in the bain-marie. Egg yolk proteins set at gentle heat but curdle if overheated, so the custard should be warmed slowly over simmering water while stirred constantly to stay smooth and thick.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (arrowroot, sugar, brandy, flour, butter, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, sugar, brandy, flour, butter, lemon, nutmeg. 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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