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Dessert

Caramel Sauce

A sweet sauce made by cooking butter, sugar, flour, and water until thickened, optionally flavored with nutmeg.

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

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Mix butter, sugar, and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until browned.

Simmer and flavor

  1. Add water and bring to a boil.

  2. Let it boil for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. If desired, flavor with nutmeg.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Sugar
Browns into caramel and provides the sauce's sweetness and color.
Butter
Adds fat and rich, toasty flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and boils.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar. Sugar caramelizes at high heat, so stirring constantly and watching the color prevents scorching. Once it darkens too far, the sauce turns bitter and cannot be fully corrected.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour. 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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