Skip to main content
Dessert

Common Sweet Sauce

A simple sweet sauce made with water, corn starch, sugar, vinegar, butter, and vanilla or lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Common Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the corn-starch or flour with cold water in a bowl to form a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the pint of water in a saucepan.

  3. Add the sugar and vinegar.

  4. Cook for three minutes over medium heat.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Stir in the butter until melted.

  7. Let the sauce cool.

  8. Add the vanilla or lemon extract for flavor.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla 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

Corn-starch or flour
Thickens the water into a smooth, pourable sauce as it heats.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel as it melts in.
Vinegar
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the paste into the sauce. Starch only thickens fully when it is heated while stirred, and it needs to be stirred into the liquid smoothly. Lumps form if the paste is added to hot liquid without mixing well or if the cook stops stirring, leaving the sauce uneven.

“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.

More sweet sauce recipes

Venison 5Common 4German 4 See all 23 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipes