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Raisin Sauce

A sweet raisin sauce made by stewing raisins with water, grits, salt, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Raisin Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the raisins in half.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the raisins in 3 cups of water with 3 tablespoons of imperial grits and ¼ teaspoon of salt for 35 to 40 minutes.

  2. Add ½ cup of sugar and grate in ½ nutmeg.

  3. Stir well and serve.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Raisins
Soften in the liquid to supply the main fruit body and sweetness of the sauce.
Imperial grits
Thicken the liquid as their starch swells and cooks during stewing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the fruit and the tartness of the raisins.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the raisins with the grits. The grits need a full, steady simmer for the whole 35 to 40 minutes to swell and cook through. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and gritty, and too hard a boil can scorch the bottom of the pan.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar. 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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