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Sauce

White Wine Sauce

A sauce made with fish stock, white stock, white wine, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

White Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine fish stock and white stock in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a simmer.

  3. Add white wine to the saucepan.

  4. Let the wine reduce slightly.

  5. Mix flour with a little cold water to form a smooth paste.

  6. Stir the flour mixture into the sauce.

  7. Cook until the sauce thickens.

  8. Add butter to the sauce.

  9. Stir until the butter melts and is incorporated.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. White wine + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, concentrating in flavour as it reduces.

The step that matters

Stir the flour paste into the sauce. Flour clumps if added dry or unevenly. Mixing it first into a smooth paste with cold water lets it disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it cooks.

“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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