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For Brandy or Wine Sauce

A custard-like sauce made with egg yolks, powdered sugar, cream or milk, and brandy or sherry, served over plum pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

For Brandy or Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the egg yolks, powdered sugar, cream or milk, and brandy or sherry. Whisk until well mixed.

  2. Fill a larger saucepan halfway with hot water and place it on the stove over medium heat.

  3. Place the small saucepan in the hot water and whisk the sauce continuously for about 6 to 8 minutes, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

  4. Remove the small saucepan from the water bath.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over plum pudding or in a sauceboat.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook gently, giving it a smooth, custard-like body.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce and mellowing the egg flavour.
Brandy or sherry
Adds aromatic flavour that complements the sweetness of the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the water bath below a boil while whisking. Egg yolks thicken gently at moderate heat, but if the sauce gets too hot they scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture. Constant whisking and gentle heat keep the proteins from setting in clumps.

“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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