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Sauce

Brandy Sauce

A sauce made with water, brandy, sugar, cornflour, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,311 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the thickener and syrup

  1. Mix the cornflour smoothly with a little of the water.

  2. In a copper saucepan, combine the remaining water and sugar. Boil and reduce to a thin syrup, skimming occasionally.

Thicken and finish

  1. Add the cornflour mixture to the syrup and stir until it boils.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the brandy. Serve warm.

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Brandy and sugar 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

Cornflour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, when boiled down, gives the syrup its body.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour; stirring it in off the heat keeps much of its scent.

The step that matters

Add the cornflour mixture to the syrup and stir until it boils. Cornflour starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil. Stirring while it heats keeps the starch dispersed, which prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, 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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