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Sweet Cider Sauce

A sauce made from sugar, water, lemons, cloves, bay leaves, and sweet cider, thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sweet Cider Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the flavorings

  1. Combine sugar and water in a pot.

  2. Add whole lemons, cloves, and bay leaves.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the mixture with cornstarch until clear.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Stir in sweet cider.

  5. Do not boil again.

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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + cidertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + cidertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together986 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemons.
Whole lemons
Add acidity and citrus aroma to the sauce.
Cloves
Add warm, spicy aroma as they steep in the liquid.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a glossy, pourable sauce as it heats.
Sweet cider
Adds fruity sweetness and fresh apple flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Do not boil again after adding the cider. Prolonged boiling can thin cornstarch-thickened sauces and dull the fresh, fruity flavor of the cider. Stirring it in off the heat keeps both the texture and the flavor intact.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, cider):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cider. 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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