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Sauce

Wine Sauce for Swteet Puddings

A sauce made with lemon rind, sugar, water, butter, flour, and wine, boiled and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 124,287 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wine Sauce for Swteet Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the lemon rind, sugar, and water together for 10-15 minutes.

  2. Remove the lemon peel.

  3. Mix the butter and flour until smooth, then stir into the sauce and boil for 1 minute.

  4. Add the wine and heat until hot, then serve immediately.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps give the sauce its body as it dissolves and boils.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Sherry or madeira
Adds the main wine flavour and aroma that defines this sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the sauce. Mixing the butter and flour into a smooth paste first, then stirring it in, prevents lumps. Boiling for the full minute after adding it lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce fully.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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