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To Make Sweet Sauce

A simple sauce made from sugar, water, flour, butter, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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To Make Sweet Sauce

Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 2 cups of sugar in ½ cup of water.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with 1 cup of water until smooth.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling sugar and water.

  4. Add a piece of butter and bring to a boil.

  5. Stir in 2 tablespoons of vinegar and a little cinnamon or nutmeg.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body as the main dissolved component of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated with water.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling syrup. Flour clumps if added without stirring or if the flour mixture is not smooth first. Mixing it until smooth and stirring it in while the liquid boils lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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