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Sauce

Jelly Sauce

A simple sauce made by dissolving sugar and grape jelly in boiling water, thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and corn work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 333 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the sugar and grape jelly in boiling water over heat.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in cold water and stir into the mixture.

  3. Bring to a boil and it's ready to use.

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. Grape + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + grapetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinises.
Grape jelly
Provides sweetness, fruity flavour and colour to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the jelly.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil. Corn starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, because its granules swell and gelatinise at high heat. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and cloudy.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn. 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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