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Dessert

Caramel Sauce

A sauce made by boiling cloves, water, and lemon peel, then combining with caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Caramel Sauce

Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Caramel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the spices

  1. Boil cloves, boiling water, and lemon peel together for 10 minutes.

Make the caramel sauce

  1. In a separate pan, combine granulated sugar and water to make caramel.

  2. Cook the caramel over high heat, stirring with a smooth stick until it turns a nice brown color.

  3. Strain the boiled mixture over the caramel.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Remove from heat.

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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Granulated sugar
Melts and browns to form the caramel, giving the sauce its sweetness and deep flavour.
Cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spiced flavour to the liquid as it simmers.
Lemon peel
Releases fragrant oils into the liquid, adding a bright aroma.

The step that matters

Browning the caramel over high heat. Sugar goes from amber to burnt within seconds, so stirring steadily and watching the colour keeps the caramel sweet and evenly browned rather than bitter.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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