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Sauce

Vinegar Sauce

A simple sauce made with boiling water, sugar, flour, nutmeg, salt, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vinegar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix flour smoothly with a little water.

  2. In a pot, combine boiling water, sugar, nutmeg, and salt. Boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Just before serving, stir in butter and vinegar.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp, tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the water smoothly. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without being first mixed into a smooth paste with cold or warm water. Lumps are hard to remove later, so the paste should be fully smooth before it goes into the pot.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

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