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Everyday Sauce

A clear sauce made with boiling water, sugar, butter, salt, corn starch, and nutmeg or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Everyday Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, bring 1 pint of water to a boil.

  2. Add 1 heaping cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon of butter, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  3. Dissolve 1 tablespoon of corn starch in a little cold water and add it to the pot.

  4. Season with nutmeg or vanilla to taste.

  5. Cook until the sauce is clear.

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. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as it heats and gelatinizes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the corn starch mixture to the pot. Corn starch must be dissolved in cold water first so it does not clump when added. It thickens only once the liquid is hot enough for its starch granules to swell, so the sauce needs to be kept heated and stirred until it turns clear and thick.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, corn. 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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