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Dessert

Modern Cookery

A lemon rind-based sauce with sugar, butter, flour, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the lemon rind, sugar, and water. Cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Add the butter and flour to the mixture and stir for 1 minute.

  4. Stir in the wine and brandy.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma and flavour to the sauce.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the liquid base.
Brandy
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour. Stirring the flour into the hot liquid for only one minute is short, so it must be mixed in evenly to avoid lumps. Flour needs enough heat and stirring to hydrate and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, wine, 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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