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Sauce

Sour Sauce

A thickened sauce made with water, sugar, butter, vinegar, corn starch, and nutmeg, served with plum or fruit puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sour Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the water in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, vinegar, and corn starch mixed with a little cold water.

  3. Cook until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve as a sauce for plum or fruit puddings.

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. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as its granules swell and absorb liquid when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds the sour, acidic flavour that gives the sauce its character.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Corn starch thickens only when heated, as its granules swell and absorb liquid. Cook until the sauce is smooth and coats a spoon, then stop, since prolonged boiling can break down the starch and thin the sauce again.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, 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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