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Sultana Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sultanas, flour, sugar, lemon, sherry, and milk, simmered to a smooth consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sultana Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sultanas

  1. Pick over and wash one-half cup of sultanas.

  2. Cook the sultanas until plump and tender in boiling water.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix two tablespoonfuls of flour with one cup of sugar and one-fourth teaspoonful of salt.

  2. Pour this mixture into one and one-half cups of boiling water.

  3. Stir until smooth and boil for ten minutes.

  4. Add the drained sultanas, a few gratings of lemon peel, and two tablespoonfuls of sherry or brandy.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

887Calories
28 gProtein
28 gFat
125 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 9 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Olive Oil1 tbsp (14g)119
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. 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. See the original page.

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. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sherry and lemon.
Sultanas
Provide sweetness and chewy texture once plumped in water.

The step that matters

Stir until smooth before boiling. Flour added to hot liquid can clump into lumps unless it is well mixed in first. Stirring until smooth and then boiling lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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