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Orange Sauce

A simple orange sauce made with flour, sugar, orange juice, water, rind, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the flour and sugar.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring.

  3. Cook the mixture for 10 minutes over medium heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the orange juice, orange rind, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the sauce until warm and serve.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in hot liquid, giving body and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus juices.
Orange juice
Provides the main liquid and the bright orange flavour.
Orange rind
Adds aromatic oils that give the sauce a fresher citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water while stirring. Flour clumps when liquid is poured in all at once. Adding the water slowly while stirring lets each starch granule separate and hydrate evenly, so the sauce thickens smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, lemon. 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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