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Ginger Sauce

A ginger-infused sauce made with grated ginger, sugar, water, lemon rind, lemon juice, and wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Ginger Sauce

Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grate the ginger and mix it with the sugar.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the ginger mixture, water, and lemon rind.

  3. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the lemon juice and white wine or brandy.

  5. Strain before serving.

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.

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.

  1. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + white winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Ginger
Provides the sharp, aromatic heat that defines the sauce's flavour.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the acidity of the lemon and ginger.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts through the sweetness.
White wine or brandy
Adds aromatic depth and a subtle background flavour to the sauce.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, white wine. 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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