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Sauce

Wine Sauce

A sauce made with boiling water, sherry, arrowroot, sugar, butter, brown sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Wine Sauce

Why it works: Sherry and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the base

  1. Mix arrowroot with cold water.

  2. Pour the mixture into boiling water.

  3. Put the mixture in a saucepan.

  4. Add sherry and sugar.

  5. Boil for one minute.

Make the butter sauce

  1. Beat butter and brown sugar to a cream.

  2. Add egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

  3. Set the bowl in a pan of boiling water over the fire.

  4. Add sherry gradually.

  5. Stir until thick and smooth like rich cream.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Sherry + arrowroottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving a smooth, glossy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a creamy texture through its fat.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Sherry
Adds aromatic wine flavor and a light acidity to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine.

The step that matters

Stir until thick and smooth over the hot water. Arrowroot thickens when heated but loses its thickening power if it boils too long, so the sauce should be stirred gently and kept just hot until it turns smooth and creamy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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