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Common Sweet Sauce

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

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

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, stir a paste made of cornstarch or flour with a little cold water into the water.

  2. Add sugar and vinegar, then cook for 3 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.

Finish

  1. Once cool, add 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Cornstarch or flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and starch swells.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the starch paste before heating. Starch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid first; if it is dropped in hot or unstirred, it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, vinegar, butter, egg):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, vinegar, butter, egg. 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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