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Cornstarch Sauce

A sweet sauce thickened with cornstarch, flavored with butter, nutmeg or vanilla, and optionally flavored with currant jelly or syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,377 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cornstarch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the boiling water, sugar, salt, cornstarch, and a little cold water in a double boiler.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes, dissolving the cornstarch before adding it.

Finish and vary

  1. Just before removing from heat, add the butter and grate in a little nutmeg or add 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

  2. For variations, add 1 tablespoon of dissolved currant jelly or 1 tablespoon of raspberry or currant syrup.

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. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinizes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the sauce's flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Dissolving the cornstarch before adding it. Cornstarch clumps into lumps if added dry to hot liquid. Mixing it into cold water first lets the granules disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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