Name: Hard Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup powdered sugar; ½ teaspoon vanilla extract; ½ cup butter

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 ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

1 cup powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup butter

Directions

Cream the butter until smooth.
Gradually add the powdered sugar, mixing well.
Stir in the vanilla extract until fully combined.

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.

Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,050 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter: Creams with the sugar to give the glaze a smooth, rich body.
Powdered sugar: Provides sweetness and bulk, dissolving into the butter to form a smooth glaze.
Vanilla extract: Adds aroma and flavor that rounds out the sweetness.

“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.