Skip to main content
Sauce

Cider Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, stock, and cider, served with boiled ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cider Sauce

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cider Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter.

  2. Once it bubbles, stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Slowly add the stock and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the cider and bring to a boil.

  5. Strain the sauce and serve with boiled ham.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + cidertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + cidertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly with melted butter into a roux.
Highly-seasoned stock
Forms the savoury base of the sauce, giving it most of its liquid and flavour.
Cider
Adds acidity and fruity sweetness that balance the salty stock.

The step that matters

Slowly add the stock. Adding liquid gradually to the hot roux lets the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps. Cooking the mixture afterward lets the starch fully thicken the sauce.

“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.

More cider sauce recipes

Apple 18 See all 16 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes