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Sauce

Sweet Sauce

A sauce made from red wine, vinegar, sugar, sliced onions, and cassia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Sweet Sauce

Why it works: Red wine and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 575 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine red wine, vinegar, sugar, sliced onions, and cassia in a pot.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

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. Red wine + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Red wine + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + cassiatop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Red wine
Provides the main liquid and deep flavour of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar and wine.
Sliced onions
Contribute savoury aroma and body to the liquid during boiling.

Swap the cassia

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, vinegar, sugar, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Cassiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, vinegar, sugar, onion. 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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