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Dessert

Ruby Hard Sauce

A sweet glaze made from butter, powdered sugar, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Ruby Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter with the powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Beat in the red currant jelly until well combined.

  3. Set the mixture in the refrigerator to chill and firm up.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + red curranttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together495 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the butter for a fine texture.
Red currant jelly
Adds tart fruit flavour, sweetness and colour, and helps the sauce firm as it chills.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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