Skip to main content
Dessert

Caramel Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, water, lemon rind, cinnamon, wine or brandy, served over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Caramel Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Caramel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine 4 tablespoons of white sugar and 1 tablespoon of water in a saucepan.

  2. Stir constantly over heat for 3-4 minutes until the water evaporates.

  3. Watch carefully until the mixture turns a delicate brown color.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 6 ounces of sugar, the lemon rind, stick cinnamon, and 1 pint of cold water in another saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil gradually.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Add 1 glass of wine or ½ glass of brandy.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the liquid quickly into the caramel mixture and mix thoroughly.

  2. Serve the sauce with pudding.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

White sugar
Melts and browns to form the caramel flavor and color of the sauce.
Sugar
Dissolves into the water to sweeten and thicken the sauce as it simmers.
Wine or brandy
Adds aroma and a sharper, more complex flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Watch the caramel closely. Sugar can go from pale gold to burnt in seconds once it begins to brown. Removing it at a delicate brown keeps the flavor mild rather than bitter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, wine. 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.

More caramel sauce recipes

Chocolate 3 See all 98 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes