Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the caramel
Put the sugar in a small frying pan and stir until it turns light brown.
Add the boiling water and cook slowly for fifteen minutes.
Flavour and serve
Add a little lemon juice and some lemon rind or a piece of stick cinnamon.
Strain and serve hot.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
- Caramelises to form the sauce's deep, slightly bitter sweetness and brown colour.
- Boiling water
- Dissolves the caramelised sugar into a pourable, liquid sauce.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the caramel.
The step that matters
Stirring the sugar until light brown. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to colour and can go from amber to burnt in moments. Stirring keeps the heat even so it browns evenly without scorching, and the colour shows how far the caramel has developed.
“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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