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Sauce

Vanilla Sauce

A simple vanilla sauce made from corn syrup, water, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,943 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Vanilla Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the white corn syrup and water.

  2. Stir to dissolve and bring to a boil.

  3. Cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.

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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Syrup + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. 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

White corn syrup
Adds sweetness and body, and helps stop the sugar from crystallizing.
Vanilla
Provides the main aroma and flavor of the syrup.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before stirring in the vanilla. Vanilla's aromatic compounds are volatile and fade with prolonged heat, so adding it off the heat helps keep its flavor in the finished syrup.

“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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