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Sauce

Brandy Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In an enamelled pan, melt the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the milk, sugar, and lemon rind, stirring until smooth.

  3. Boil for five minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the brandy, reheat, and strain into a tureen.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with flour forms the thickening base.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Milk
Forms the main liquid, adding creaminess and body to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the brandy and lemon.
Brandy
Contributes its aroma and warm, spirited flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk in smoothly. Flour starch clumps if it meets liquid unevenly. Stirring the milk in gradually while the butter and flour are blended keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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