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Sauce

Vinegar Sauce

A sweet and tangy sauce made with vinegar, sugar, flour, butter, vanilla, water, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Vinegar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix vinegar, sugar, flour, butter, and vanilla with a little water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Gradually add nearly 1 pint of boiling water while stirring gently.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Stir in the well-beaten egg and set aside for use.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce when stirred in.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp, acidic flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the well-beaten egg. Adding the egg to a boiling mixture can scramble it into lumps. Off the heat or with the mixture just cooled slightly, and stirred steadily, the egg blends smoothly and thickens the sauce gently.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, flour, butter, egg. 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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