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Dessert

Fruit Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, water, butter, cornstarch, fruit, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the sugar and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for a few minutes.

  3. Add the butter and cornstarch mixed with a little cold water.

  4. Stir in the canned fruit or jelly and the lemon juice.

  5. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve with fritters or puddings.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps form a syrupy base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Canned fruit or jelly
Provides the main fruit flavour and colour of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Add the cornstarch slurry to the boiling syrup. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water first so it does not clump, then heated until it thickens. Stirring while it boils helps it thicken evenly and prevents lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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