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Dessert

Cherry Sauce

A sweet sauce made with flour, sugar, egg, cherry juice, water, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cherry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix flour and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and stir.

  3. Let it boil for a moment.

  4. Slowly pour the mixture over the beaten egg while stirring.

  5. Beat the mixture for a moment.

  6. Add cherry juice and finely chopped cherries, then stir to combine.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 it heats with the liquid, giving it body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce when gently heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the tartness of the cherries.
Cherry juice
Adds fruity flavour and liquid to the sauce.
Chopped cherries
Adds fruit flavour and pieces of texture throughout the sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the mixture over the beaten egg while stirring. Adding the hot mixture gradually while stirring warms the egg gently, so it thickens smoothly instead of scrambling or curdling.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

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