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Sauce

Plain Sweet Sauce

A simple sweet sauce made with water, corn starch, sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine water and corn starch.

  2. Stir in sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  3. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve warm or cold.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

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

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinizes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Corn starch must reach a boil to fully thicken, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, nutmeg. 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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