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Sauce

Vanilla Sauce

A simple sauce made with hot water, butter, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,050 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Vanilla Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine hot water and butter.

  2. Bring to a boil and thicken slightly.

  3. Stir in vanilla and a pinch of salt to blend.

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. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 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

Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vanilla
Provides the main aroma and flavor of the sauce.

“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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