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Plain Sauce

A simple sauce made from water, sugar, cornstarch, lemon rind, butter, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plain Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 2 cups of water and 1 cup of sugar together.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with a little cold water to create a slurry.

  3. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the boiling water and sugar.

  4. Add the rubbed lemon rind, 1 teaspoon of butter, and your preferred flavoring.

  5. Cook until the cornstarch is well incorporated to avoid a raw taste.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as it cooks with the sugar water.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and adds body to the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornstarch fully. Cornstarch must be heated long enough for its starch granules to swell and thicken; if undercooked, the sauce keeps a raw, starchy taste and flat texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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