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Fruit Sauce

Fruit sauce made with sugar, corn syrup, fruit juice, water, cornstarch, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, salt, and cornstarch.

  2. Gradually add boiling water while stirring constantly.

  3. You can use any fruit juice or a mixture from canned fruit.

Cook and finish

  1. Stir in corn syrup and bring to a boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and add oleomargarine, spices, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce its body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the liquid.
Light corn syrup
Adds sweetness and a smooth texture that resists crystallizing.
Fruit juice
Provides the main liquid and fruit flavor of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness.
Oleomargarine
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water gradually while stirring constantly. Cornstarch clumps when liquid is poured in too fast. Stirring while adding the water spreads the starch evenly so it dissolves and thickens smoothly as the mixture heats.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, syrup, cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, syrup, cinnamon, ginger. 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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