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Sauce for Dumplings

A sweet and tangy sauce made with sugar, cornstarch, butter, vinegar, vanilla, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sauce for Dumplings

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch.

  2. Add butter, vinegar, and vanilla.

  3. Stir in boiling water until the sauce is fairly thick.

Serve

  1. Serve warm over dumplings.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, dissolved in the liquid, gives the sauce its body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the boiling water, giving it a glossy, fairly thick texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Stir in boiling water until fairly thick. Cornstarch only thickens when it is heated in liquid and reaches a boil, so the water must be boiling and the sauce stirred until it thickens. Stopping early leaves it thin, while overheating or stirring too little can leave lumps.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, vinegar, sauce. 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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