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Dessert

Hot Fruit Sauce

A sauce made from berries, sugar, cornstarch, butter, cream, powdered sugar, and wine, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hot Fruit Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fruit sauce

  1. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water until smooth.

  2. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the berries and sugar.

  3. Boil for 5 to 10 minutes, then mash and strain.

Make the butter sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and gradually add the powdered sugar.

  2. Beat in the wine, then add the cream just before serving.

  3. Alternatively, combine the cream and wine, and cook over hot water until smooth and creamy, without melting the butter.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Berries
Provide the main fruit flavour and body of the sauce once boiled and strained.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps balance its tartness.
Butter
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture to the butter sauce.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into creamed butter, sweetening it with a fine, smooth texture.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Do not melt the butter in the alternative method. Cream the butter and cream the cream and wine over gentle hot water, not direct heat. Butter that melts separates and loses its smooth, emulsified texture, so the sauce turns greasy and grainy.

“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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