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Dessert

Maraschino Sauce

A sweet sauce made from corn starch, sugar, boiling water, butter, maraschino cherries, syrup, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Maraschino Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix corn starch and sugar.

  2. Add boiling water and cook until smooth and clear, stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in butter, cherries, Maraschino syrup, and lemon juice.

  4. Serve immediately or the sauce will need to be thinned.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Corn + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps balance the tartness of the lemon juice.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Maraschino cherries
Provide the main cherry flavour, colour and texture in the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar and cherries.

The step that matters

Cook the cornstarch mixture until smooth and clear. Cornstarch must be stirred constantly while heating in boiling water so its granules swell evenly and gelatinize without lumps. Cooking until clear shows the starch has fully thickened, and the sauce thins if it is not properly set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, butter, syrup. 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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