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Dessert

Raspberry or Strawberry Sauce

A fruit sauce made by boiling berries with water, sugar, lemon juice, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Raspberry or Strawberry Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the berries, water, sugar, and lemon juice until soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add the brandy and serve.

Winter variation

  1. In winter, substitute jam and sherry for fresh berries and 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.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Fresh berries
Provide the main flavour, colour, and body once softened and pressed through a sieve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the natural tartness of the berries.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour and keeps it fresh-tasting.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth; it is stirred in at the end so its scent is not cooked off.

The step that matters

Cook the berries until fully soft before sieving. Fully softened fruit breaks down into a smooth pulp that passes easily through the sieve. Underdone berries stay lumpy and leave more seeds and fibre behind, giving a grainy sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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