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Dessert

Vanilla Sauce, for Sweet Puddings

A vanilla sauce made by boiling vanilla pod and sugar, thickened with arrowroot, and finished with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vanilla Sauce, for Sweet Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the vanilla and sugar in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Mix arrowroot with cold water to form a smooth paste.

  3. Strain the boiling syrup over the arrowroot paste and stir until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add brandy and serve.

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. Vanilla + arrowroottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

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

  4. Arrowroot + brandytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Vanilla pod
Infuses the syrup with its aroma as it boils.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and adds body to the syrup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, glossy texture when heated.
Brandy
Adds a warm, alcoholic aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Strain the boiling syrup over the arrowroot paste and stir until smooth. Arrowroot must be added to hot liquid and stirred well so starch granules swell evenly and thicken without lumps. Pouring in a smooth paste first prevents clumping.

“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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