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Wine Syrup Sauce

A sweet wine-based sauce made with sherry, sugar, jam, lemon juice, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Wine Syrup Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water, and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce the mixture to half its quantity.

  3. Add the sherry, lemon juice, jam, and cochineal.

  4. Once the jam is dissolved, strain the sauce and it is ready to use.

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. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lump sugar
Dissolves into the boiled water to form the syrup base and provides sweetness.
Sherry
Adds its wine flavour and aroma to the syrup as it is added after reduction.
Jam
Adds fruit sweetness and flavour, and dissolves into the warm syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the syrup.

The step that matters

Reducing the syrup to half. Boiling off water concentrates the sugar, which thickens the syrup as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while boiling too long can make it overly thick or sticky.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar. 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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