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Dessert

Wine or Brandy Sauce

A sweet custard-like sauce made from sugar, eggs, flour, and vanilla, steamed in pudding or jelly molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Wine or Brandy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the sugar and eggs together in a kettle for 30 minutes.

  2. Ensure all ingredients are cold and beat in a cool place.

  3. When finished, the kettle should be half full of a foamy batter.

  4. Stir in the flour in portions without beating until well mixed.

  5. Add the vanilla extract.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam in pudding or jelly molds for about 1.5 hours.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Whipped with sugar to trap air, giving the batter a foamy, light structure.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the eggs hold their foam while beating.
Finest flour
Sets during steaming to give the pudding its body and structure.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour in portions without beating. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, making the pudding tough and dense. Gentle folding keeps the air from the whipped eggs intact so the steamed result stays light.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Lemonfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour. 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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