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Sauce

Butter Sauce

A sweet and spicy butter sauce made with butter, sugar, water, cinnamon, corn starch, and brandy.

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

Why it works: Corn and cinnamon work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, water, and cinnamon over medium heat.

  2. Once boiling, add the butter.

  3. Mix the corn starch with a little cold water and stir it into the saucepan.

  4. Let it boil for 2 minutes, then remove from heat and stir in the brandy.

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. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Adds richness and a nutty, toasty flavour to the sauce.
Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and helps give the sauce body as it dissolves.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce when heated.
Brandy
Adds aromatic depth and flavour stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornstarch slurry. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in cold water before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. It thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil, so the sauce must be kept boiling for the set time to reach full thickness.

“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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