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Brandy Sauce, No. 1

A sauce made with butter, arrowroot, water, brandy, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold water.

  2. Add the remainder of the water, butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

  3. Stir over the heat until boiling.

  4. Cook for two minutes, then add the brandy.

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. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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 or potato flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the brandy's sharpness.
Brandy
Adds the main aroma and flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the brandy after the two minutes of cooking. Brandy's aromatic compounds are volatile, so prolonged boiling drives much of their flavour off. Adding it at the end keeps the sauce tasting of brandy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootthe original
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, brandy, nutmeg, 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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