Name: Polish Sauce, for Sweet Puddings
Ingredients: 1 ounce butter; 2 teaspoons moist sugar; 2 teaspoons fine flour; ¼ cup claret; 2 teaspoons stoned and chopped raisins; 2 teaspoons picked and washed currants; ⅛ small nutmeg, grated; 1 inch thin lemon rind; 6 blanched almonds, cut small

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Polish Sauce, for Sweet Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Melt the butter and sugar in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves.
Stir in the flour and let it brown.
Pour in the claret and add the raisins, currants, nutmeg, lemon rind, and almonds.
Simmer gently for 15 minutes until the currants are soft.

Serve

Serve warm over sweet 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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Provides fat and richness, and helps the sugar melt smoothly into the sauce.
Fine flour: Thickens the sauce as it cooks, and browns slightly for a deeper flavour.
Claret: Adds liquid and acidity, forming the body of the sauce.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy texture as they soften in the liquid.
Currants: Soften during simmering, adding tartness and moist texture.

The step that matters

Let the flour brown. Flour cooked in melted butter needs time to toast and lose its raw taste. Browning too little leaves a pasty flavour, while browning too far turns it bitter, so watch colour closely before adding liquid.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, raisin, nutmeg, lemon, almond):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, raisin, nutmeg, lemon, almond. 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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Polish Sauce, for Sweet Puddings