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Colouring for Soups or Gravies

A liquid coloring made from sugar, butter, and water used to tint soups or gravies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Colouring for Soups or Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine the sugar, ½ cup water, and butter in a small saucepan over low heat.

  2. Stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture turns bright brown.

Dilute and store

  1. Add ½ pint of water, bring to a boil, skim off any impurities, then let it cool.

  2. Bottle and cork the mixture tightly.

Use

  1. Add to soup or gravy until the desired color is achieved.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Caramelizes as it heats, turning brown and giving the mixture its dark color.

The step that matters

Stirring until bright brown. Sugar caramelizes quickly over heat. Once it passes the bright brown stage it burns and turns bitter, which would carry an off taste into the soup or gravy.

“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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